


The Importance of Being Karkat

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Complicated Relationships, F/F, F/M, Family, Hate to Love, Inspired by Music, M/M, Past Abuse, Recreational Drug Use, Teen Angst, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-10-28 17:00:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10835505
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Your name is Karkat Vantas, and honestly? You prefer the life you live online. By day you’re a regular social outcast at Valley View High, but on the Internet you are unabashedly KK, the passionate, overzealous talk show host of the radio program Quadrant.Until a miscommunication with your ex causes your shit-talking show to go viral. Your newfound stardom comes with personal tensions, viruses and threats from international hackers, and the attention of the fast-talking, fast-living Dave Strider.Your name is Karkat Vantas, and you're in for the year of your life.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I was writing fan fiction on here and Tumblr as gastlyhaungergengar four years ago. Mostly I wrote Kankri/Karkat stories you might have seen as The Dreams Verse.
> 
> Apparently now, in my old age and now that Homestuck is over (but glad to see there is still a fandom!), I have finally got my groove back and want to write all the FF. All of it. However upon reading HS again I'm falling in love with different ships.
> 
> DaveKat has wormed its way into my heart. Send help. I've fallen
> 
> If you read any of this at all, please, please let me know what you think!
> 
> P.S., I apologize for my pesterlog formatting, something about the way the rich text translates when I copy-paste it is breaking it.

 

 _Don't switch on me, I got big plans_  
_We need to fall off to the islands_  
_And get you gold, no spray tans_  
_I need you to stop running back_  
_To your ex, he's a waste man_  
_I wanna know how come we can_  
_Never slash and stay friends?_  
_I'm blem for real,_  
_I might just say how I feel_

 

\-- Drake, "[Blem"](https://genius.com/Drake-blem-lyrics)

 

♋️

 

Your name is Karkat Vantas, and honestly? You prefer the life you live online. On the Internet you are the unabashed KK, the passionate, overzealous talk show host of the radio program The Quadrant.

 

Your coder friends Sollux and Nepeta, and her boyfriend Equius, work with you at the station nightly to keep up The Quadrant. You met twinArmageddons and arsenicCatnip respectively on the subReddit for your California cow-town. It turned out they were also thirteen and also bought weed from the waitress at Denny’s on Lake St. Last year, Nepeta got all three of you jobs at the Ensena community radio station during the 2 a.m. block, which Equius was running as a project for his college thesis.The township Ensena, where anonymity is granted to you as a non-resident, is a mostly overrun forrest known for its hiking trails that grace the Instagrubs of college students, and its quaint, low-income trailer-park-dwellers who are tacitly Not Allowed into the much nicer suburbs of the Valley.

 

The point of Equius’s no-name show on 94.4 WBFN was definitely not originally The Quadrant. But within weeks of your guest debut, your time slot was one of the most listened to numbers on the station. A la Alice Piezeki's The Chart from _The L Word_ — _don’t fucking judge,_ _it’s a good fucking_ _show—_ users of Quadrant can draw on a never-ending virtual "wall" and make connections between themselves and other usernames. The kicker about the wall though is this: no characters, words, sentences or real-life identities allowed. Only drawings, emojis, memes, and .gifs can be used to convey a user’s feelings.

 

Over the last year, you and your misfit friends have watched your smörgåsbord of sometimes-obscene, sometimes-hilarious, and sometimes-heartbreaking graffiti grow to a viewership of 1,000 a month. Many users have a tradition of logging in and updating the shipping wall live with your broadcast.

 

Even though it’s a pain in the ass to drive forty-five minutes to the other side of the metaphorical tracks, in the middle of the night, something about the lovesick teenagers who call into your show—and your weird hacker friends who stay up late to ramble with you--make it all worthwhile. By day you’re a regular social outcast at Valley View High in the suburbs, where your companionship is stifled to your childhood friend Kanaya and her girlfriend Rose by proxy, and the sometimes-acknowledgment you get in the halls from your estranged senior half-brother Kankri. But honestly, you’d rather be a loser than get sympathy from that judgmental spitwad.

 

At least you've got a job—emceeing—that you’re good at. At least to Sollux, Nepeta and Equius, you’re the leader of a mischievous and fascinating social experiment. Your listeners are kind of your life.

 

“Greetings, earthlings, and welcome to this hour of Quadrant with your host, the most cursed individual on this god-forsaken planet. Tonight, I invite you all to take a buggy and this-makes-me-depressed-about-the-state-of-the-world-we-live-in journey though the self-indulgent, fuck-boy-mongering circle-jerk that is the new and somehow completely fucking worthless update of Cindr!”

 

“If it wasn’t for you all I wouldn’t touch anything that WhatPumpkin develops with a ten foot pole, but here I am sifting through this hot steaming garbage. In version 11.8.1.no-matter-how-many-updates-you-push-your-fundamental-code-will-still-suck, not only did they not fix the thing where you can edit someone’s bio and not only can you ‘super-burn!’ people--as if we needed one more convoluted and vaguely-sounds-like-an-STD way to avoid sending that message that says ‘You’re hot, and I’m desperate!’--but of this date, all your Chumbook friends, including your mom and embarrassing grandpa who tags you in things, are openly synced and displayed on your public Cindr profile. If you’ve deleted your Chumbook account, don’t worry! It digs up your past friends from the server farm grave.”

 

“Our users have expressed their distastes with the new Cindr app by dabbling in their usual absurdist graffiti on our wall. Memes include comparing Cindr to the newest Nylee Gender album flopping and apparently people’s ‘side hoes’ are being exposed by the udpate? To which I honestly am not fucking surprised at all. Some of you people have no shame. Anyway, I think the real problem is the larger trend of big-name-social-media sites assuming you want your parents and classmates knowing you RP as a half-dragon-half-werewolf-seeking cat-echidna-hybrids on Devianpaint.”

 

“Here with us now is the bane of my existence, my backend developer twinArmageddonth.”

 

“Fuck you for thaying I’d get anywhere near your backendth, KK.”

 

“Tell me, what is the fundamental problem with WhatPumpkin linking Cindr to Chumbook?”

 

“Firth of all, Chumbook ith for overtharing thquareth who hang out with their parenth and don’t care enougth about their data being thold for leth than pennieth on the dollar--”

 

“In your opinion--”

 

“--by corporationth that are making literal buckethloadth thelling proprietary spyware to dumbatheth! I have proof and I can prove it. Second, thith app taketh up ath much thpace ath KK’th mom did when the got pregnanth with hith mouthy ath. There’th no reathon thith much RAM thould be thpent and no reathon FuckPumpkin’th app needth like ten thouthand permithions! Thith ith a dating app not a live thync all my methages, phototh, dick picth and travel planth to thome ambiguouth cloud thever app. Just thay no to thouleth and thameleth plugth who profit off our our private liveth, people.”

 

“Okay! Now that we’ve appeased our one-man tin-foil-hat-brigade, here is our expert on all things feminine, the crazy kitty-cat shipper girl. Which I call her with all the affection I can muster.”

 

“Thanks, KK! Now many of our feline-identifying users are saying that they appurreciate the update! For one, it forces our potential purr-tners to be honest and open about their existing relationships! Many felines on Quadrant express their feelings with jealous or lonesome symbols! Ladies feel that purr-tners are not being honest about the time they spend with other kittens.”

 

“As a member of the male species, I can attest to this shit. Basically straight men are driven by two things, how they measure up to other men and how they measure up to other men’s perception of what females’ perception of them is. All of this is done without magically realizing that guess what, you self-absorbed-deadbeats? If you want to know what women want, maybe you should fucking speak to them. Talk about a wild concept!”

 

“Which reminds me. Last night at 4 a.m. Quadrant user tatsandedm420 started a monogamous ship between himself and user pleasenodickpics. Pleasenodickpics responded by shipping tatsandedm420 with at least fifty other users in their network. All of whom confirmed these illicit affairs. Apparently tatsandedm420, aside from having terrible taste in music and probably overall life choices, has made out with more people in the last week than yours truly ever will.”

  
“Jokes aside, I get it. Infidelity looks cool in movies and having cameras in our faces all the time makes us feel like we’re ugly unless we’re famous. But you know what I miss? I miss the days when walking up to someone in person and telling them how you felt about them wasn’t such a fucking ordeal. Or at least something you guys didn’t express so much anxiety about. When we weren’t all hiding behind these projections and copy-pasted-pick-up-lines, and all our mistakes weren’t publicly re-traceable as part of our timelines.”

 

“I miss when love was just. Simple. When it wasn’t an algorithm or a personality quiz, and when people were just. People. Living in a 3D world, passing hand-written notes under the table, smelling roses together in the park. Actual roses with soft, velvet petals, and actual girlfriends with soft, loving hands.”

 

Sollux, Nepeta and Equius raise their eyebrows in time at the host.

 

“But alright, enough of that flowery tomfoolery. Let’s take some callers.”

 

♋️

 

There are moments when you realize that you aren’t happy with where you are, but at least you’re not still where you used to be. Sitting in homeroom on the first day of class the following morning is giving you that feeling. Freshman year was emotionally toiling because on top of only having two trusted companions – both of whom are lesbians, and you know that having gay friends doesn't _make_ you gay but rumors still circulate, because children are stupid -- finally you were going out with the most badass and most aggravating girl of your dreams -- the much-cuter-than-you, justice-seeking Terezi Pyrope -- but of course, because the universe can only punish Karkat, who did she end up cheating on you with? Dave Strider, the most annoying and fake-ironic hipster in the goddamn Valley.

 

Blonde hair, slim waist, thick thighs, and red eyes. He's only the most popular guy by virtue of his striking looks, and his supposedly infallible sense of humor, and being the younger brother of one Dirk Strider of the class of 2014. He’s been best friends with John Egbert since kindergarten, a bromance to rival the greats. Also, his family is rich as fuck. You have nothing in common with the fucker, you know it, but like the two of you are cosmically fated, Dave usually has something inadvertently to do with the thorn in your side that is your vile self-hatred. Like the whipped cream on top of the shit-baked-brownie sundae that is your life.

 

As if watching Terezi with him on social media and out of it isn’t bad enough, this year, you don’t have homeroom or pretty much any classes with Kanaya or Rose. Silently you sit as your talkative classmates, the people you grew up around but never really bonded to, chat and catch up about their summers, which most of them spent right here in the Valley. Supposing anyone wanted to ask what you’d done, they wouldn’t be able to. In classes you kept your crab-shaped headphones (we get it, you’re a Cancer) covering your ears until the last possible moment.

 

When the bell rings, Mrs. Haskell—the sweet older lady you’ve often had for homeroom—asks everyone to settle for announcements. Sometimes Terezi reads announcements in the mornings as she’s on the journalism staff. Just as you’re thinking it’d be nice not to hear her cacophonous voice that makes you miss her so much this frighteningly early, Terezi clicks on the PA system, clears her throat, and goes.

 

“ _Good morning, Valley View! Today I’d like to start the homeroom announcements a little bit differently. Many of us spent out summers partying and not doing the summer reading lists, while others of us took up passion projects that really meant a lot for us. Some others made a pact to get their grades up and try to get into college. And others, like my ex Karkat Vantas, started a community radio show where he gives inspirational tirades like the following. I think this should set the tone for the year we’re about to all have, don’t you?”_

 

“' _Greetings, earthlings, and welcome to this hour of Quadrant with your host, the most cursed individual on this god-forsaken planet.'”_

 

This? No. Fuck no. This can’t actually be a thing that is happening.

 

“' _Tonight, I invite you all to take a buggy and this-makes-me-depressed-about-the-state-of-the-world-we-live-in journey though the self-indulgent, fuck-boy-mongering circle-jerk that is the new and somehow completely fucking worthless update of Cindr!'”_

 

Your homeroom is gasping, cackling, whispering and staring over their shoulders at you. “Oh my god, Karkat, is that really him?” “I’ve never heard him talk so much in his life.” Meanwhile you flip up the hood on your sweartshirt and do your best impression of a turtle trying to commit suicide inside its own shell. As you bite your shaking lip you imagine Terezi sitting there, just sitting there smugly. Did she record you and plan to humiliate you all last night? Why wouldn't she send you a message?

 

“' _You know what I miss? I miss the days when walking up to someone in person and telling them how you felt about them wasn’t such a fucking ordeal. Or at least something you guys didn’t express so much anxiety about. When we weren’t all hiding behind these projections and copy-pasted-pick-up-lines, and all our mistakes weren’t publicly re-traceable as part of our timelines.”'_

 

“' _I miss when love was just. Simple. When it wasn’t an algorithm or a personality quiz, and when people were just. People. Living in a 3D world, passing hand-written notes under the table, and smelling roses together in the park. Actual roses with soft, velvet petals, and actual girlfriends with soft, loving hands.”'_

 

You know what you did to deserve this, but also you don’t know what you did to deserve this. You do know that the ooohing and aaahing from your classmates right now--“Damn, Karkat!” and “Soft, loving hands—you getting any, Karkat?”-- just about makes you want to fucking die.

 

“Wow, um, class? Settle, please?” Mrs. Haskell is flushed red like a bell pepper. She answers her now-ringing desk phone. “Hello, yes? Karkat? The principal wants to see you.”

 

♋️

 

In the ten minute break between home and first periods, you scurry hoodie up and head down to the L-shaped table on the outskirts of the quad. This is your meeting place with Kanaya and Rose, who this morning are already predictably sitting as much in each other’s laps as is allowed by school PDA rules. The two are sharing Rose’s headphones and iThrone for music.

 

When they see you they both appear solemn, immediately remove their devices.

 

“If either of you say anything _resembling_ sympathetic about the broadcast, I’m going to lose my barely recollected shit.”

 

You plop down next to Kanaya and steal her half of the headphone unit.

 

“Taking things that well, I see,” says Rose.

 

“Look at the bright side,” Kanaya says as you quickly yank the headphone out in disgust—today is Alanis Morresette’s Greatest Hits day— “Valley View is so full of drama that I’m sure everyone will forget about this tomorrow morning.”

 

“During my walk of shame to the principal’s office, people yelled ‘Quadrant’ and ‘lover boy’ at my retreating figure. Mrs. Haskell, who’s known me since I was five, said she’s going to call me ‘KK’ for the rest of the semester.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Your phone suddenly buzzes violently in your pocket. You see you have several missed calls from unknown numbers—oh boy—but more importantly, GC is trying to reach you.

 

_gallowsCallibrator began pestering carcinoGenetecist at 07:49:03._

 

GC: ‘1F YOU W4NT TO KNOW WH4T WOM3N W4NT, M4YB3 YOU SHOULD FUCK1NG SP34K TO TH3M?’

GC: SUCH 4 W1LD CONC3PT TH4T NOT 3V3N YOU C4N H4NDL3 1T, STR4NG3R >:P

CG: THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I WAS FUCKING TALKING ABOUT. I’M LITERALLY SITTING IN THE EXACT SAME QUAD AS YOU.

CG: I CAN SEE YOU AT THE COOL TABLE WITH JOHN BUCK-TOOTH EGBERT, MY INSUFFRABLE HALF-BROTHER AND FIFTEEN OTHER ASSHOLES. CHEWING WITH YOUR MOUTH WIDE OPEN AND STABBING GAMZEE WITH YOUR CANE. HONESTLY WHY DO YOU STILL EVEN CARRY THAT GARRISH EYESORE? IT’S NOT LIKE YOU NEED IT SINCE YOU HAD SURGERY.

GC: MY C4NDY R3D C4NDY C4N3 1S NOT 4N 3Y3SORE!!! 1TS F4SHION4BL3, 3V3N K4N4Y4 THINKS SO >:P

GC: 1TS NOT L1K3 SURG3RY F1X3D 4LL MY PROBL3MS

CG: STOP GLANCING BACK HERE AT KANAYA AND ROSE FOR APPROVAL.

CG: YOU BROKE UP WITH ME, SO I GET THE FRIENDS. THAT WAS OUR AGREEMENT.

GC: F1N3, 1 DONT C4R3 WH4T YOU TH1NK 4NYW4Y!

GC: D4V3 L1K3S MY CANE

CG: OH MY GOD, DOES HE REALLY??????

CG: OF COURSE THE MASTER OF BRANDISHING AN INSINCERE AND SPECTACULARLY UNNECESSARY PERSONA THINKS SOMETHING LIKE A CANE COULD BE A GENUINE EXPRESSION OF ONES IDENTITY.

CG: OF COURSE, WITH HIS SELF-SERVING HIPSTER ASS BLOGS, HIS THOUSAND DOLLAR GLASSES AND STUPID, LAME PARTIES.

GC: Y4WN

CG: ALSO, WHAT THE HELL, TEREZI? SERIOUSLY?

GC: WH4T

CG: YOU KNOW GODDAMN WELL ‘WHAT.’

GC: 1 DONT KNOW WHY YOUR3 UPS3T. P3OPL3 L1KED 1T

GC: 1 DONT S33 ANYTH1NG WRONG WITH PROMOTING A FRI3ND WHO H4S T4L3NT ON MY PL4TFORM

CG: I’M SORRY I DIDN’T REALIZE THE ENTIRE PA SYSTEM AT VALLEY VIEW HIGH SCHOOL WAS LAID OUT LIKE A FUCKING RED CARPET FOR ONE TEREZI PYROPE!

CG: I’M NOT SUSPENDED OR ANYTHING BUT FORGIVE ME FOR NOT WANTING MY PRIVATE AND PERSONAL FEELINGS JUDGED BY EVERYONE I’VE KNOWN IN REAL LIFE SINCE THE FOURTH GRADE. WHO ALREADY HATE ME BECAUSE I’M SHORT AND TERRIFYING-LOOKING, MY PARENTS ARE DIVORCED AND I EMBARRASSED MYSELF IN FRONT OF EVERYONE ON STAGE THAT ONE TIME.

CG: YOU KNOW HOW MUCH I HATE THE ASSHOLES THAT GO HERE, AND STILL YOU GUT ME OPEN LIKE A DEAD FISH IN FRONT OF THEM. BLEW THE TOP OFF OF THE ONE ESCAPE I HAD FROM THIS COW-TOWN I’ll NEVER GET AWAY FROM.

GC: UGH, K4RK4T

GC: TH3 V4LL3Y 1S NOT 4 COW TOWN

GC: 4ND S1NC3 WH3N 4R3 COMMUN1TY R4D1O BRO4C4STS ‘PR1V4T3’???

GC: STOP BL4M1NG M3 FOR TH3 1D3NT1TY CR1S1S YOU SHOULD H4V3 S33N COM1NG

GC: 4LSO 1 HOP3 ON3 D4Y YOU R34L1Z3

GC: P3OPL3 DONT H4T3 YOU 4S MUCH 4S YOU TH1NK TH3Y DO

CG: WELL I’M CERTAINLY CONVINCED THAT YOU DO!

GC: 4M 1 P1SSED THAT YOU FIN4LLY 4DM1TT3D YOU LOV3 M3, NOT TO MY F4C3, BUT TO 4 THOUS4ND STR4NG3RS YOU C4R3 4BOUT MOR3 TH4N M3???

GC: Y3S

GC: BUT 1 DONT H4T3 YOU

GC: 1 COULD N3V3R H4T3 YOU

 

“Karkat.”

 

“What, Kanaya?”

 

“I just thought you should know that people are staring.”

 

_gallowsCalibrator stopped pestering carcinoGeneticist at 07:56:14._

 

_gallowsCalibrator logged off._

 

Those who know you—the far and few between—know that as KK, you hate the status quo and embrace resistance. But here, at Valley View? While you avoid the stares and points from your classmates you miserably watch Terezi across the way. Surrounded by friends, mostly boys, laughing and having fun without you and your self-hatred making her feel insecure. You know you lost her because of social order.

 

In the real world, your know your place. And that place feels very, very small.

 

♋️

 

_carcinoGeneticist started pestering gallowsCalibrator at 14:01:48._

 

CG: I DIDN’T KNOW YOU WERE STILL LISTENING.

 

_carcinoGeneticist ceased pestering gallowsCallibrator at 14:01:48._


	2. Chapter 2

_C’mere rude boy boy, can you get it up?_  
_C’mere rude boy boy, is you big enough?_  
_Take it, take it, baby, baby_  
_Take it, take it, l_ _ove me, love me_  
_Tonight I'm a let you be the captain_  
_Tonight I'm a let you do your thing, yeah_  
_Tonight I'm a let you be a rider_  
_Giddy-up giddy-up giddy-up, babe_

–Rihanna, "[Rude Boy](https://genius.com/92727)"

 

  

♋️ 

  

By the last bell in the afternoon, you’re thinking this day could seriously not get any worse. But unfortunately you have to meet Kankri in his soccer-mom sedan at the edge of the school parking lot, where no one can see you two, to get a ride home.

 

If your car wasn’t in need of a new tire – and if your distant machismo father didn’t demand “you boys” (read: only you, because Kankri's mom helped him) fixed your car problems by yourselves – you wouldn’t be asking your relation for anything. Since his latecoming transfer to your school district when your shared father and his mother got remarried, you’ve always thought it’s been kind of bullshit that your crazy-conservative, pseudo-social-science-believing, purity-ring-wearing virgin of a half/step brother, is popular by proxy and you aren’t. For some reason Kankri Vantas has always been best friends with and taken under the wing by the also somehow popular, freewheeling bisexual scumbag Cronus Ampora.

 

No one understands their relationship. No one questions it.

 

“I’d appreciate it if you removed your shoes before you got into my car,” Kankri says to you shrilly when you open the door. “I just had it washed.”

 

You do so and try to grumble your complaints as inaudibly as possible. You shut the door and he quickly pulls off, but not without scowling and sucking his teeth.

 

“For Christ’s sake.”

 

“What?”

 

“Put them back on.” He whines, rolls down the window on his side. “Your feet smell terrible.”

 

“Fuck you, asshole, I’ve been on my feet and at my desk, stewing in melodramatic jack and polygamy, for eight hours straight. And don’t say ‘So have I.’ I don’t need your preacher's gambit maxing out today.”

 

Your senior brother is quiet. (He doesn’t listen to the radio or anything when he’s in the car, what a freak, right? The solemn fuck.) But only for a moment.

 

“Just wait until Dad finds out what happened at school today.”

 

“That’s funny because I’m not planning on telling him, and if you do, Houston, there’s going to be a motherfucking problem. Got it? Principal Doc decided not to write me up or call home because I’m a chipper goddamn delight, because I’m in Honors and AP, and because it’s not my fault my crayon-eating ex tried to sully my good name.”

 

“I’m just saying, you should really keep your personal life off the air and stop doing that stupid show. It’s embarrassing.”

 

Kankri goes on to tell you some new age nonsense about how "everyone needs a safe space but certain things don't need to be rubbed in people's faces" and the drive is only fractionally tolerable because over the years, you’ve learned how to drown his voice out. At this point in your long-estranged kinship he doesn’t even care when you pull out your crabphones, drag them over your mussed hair and too-large ears. Shift your body starboard and press your hot nose up against the cold window. He just keeps talking.

 

The fifteen minutes to your neighborhood takes you through picturesque, green-tree-lined streets and white houses lined up perfectly for miles on end. This local waterhole, the big town mall, the names of the streets you’ve had memorized since you were a kid; it all makes wonder what the rest of California is like outside the Valley. You can't wait to get out of this place one day.

When you get home you immediately go upstairs to your bedroom and slam the door shut. Finally alone. You have hells of moderation to be doing on the Quadrant wall and forums, and ~ATH code for class you should be writing, but ~ATH is an insufferable language to work with. Its logic is composed of nothing but infinite loops, or at best, loops of effectively interminable construction. Basically writing in it makes you want to kill yourself.

 

Your King sized bed is looking welcoming, entrapping. Full of dark, heavy blankets, discarded tissues, gaming controllers. Your half-rolled joint full of mostly shake and near empty quarter of weed from yesterday, plus your still-full Zoloft medication, sit on the desk beside it. This bed can be a toxic place where, if left unstirred, you will spend most or all of your time, recuperating from excruciating self-awareness. Today it calls you because of that feeling, and you enter, full-flopping down onto the covers and pressing your face in your sweat-smelling pillows.

 

You shouldn’t be so upset about what your brother said. It's not like his life is all roses. There’s something distinctly not right about his relationship with Cronus, and you’re starting to feel done letting him sidestep the matter.

 

Even before Kankri crash landed in your life like a bad alien version of The Parent Trap, your personal and emotional relationships at home were a lot to handle. You never learned how to hold all these limes. Kankri’s mother is your father’s first baby mother, to whom he’s been married twice. This second time around is going much better than the first. That was broken off when you were born by a young undocumented woman your father used to know in high school. He then spent years as a renegade leaving his prior wife and having a torrid affair with your mother, who was thirteen years his senior and needed him for everything. Those are years you can’t remember well even though you try to. For reasons you still don't know, because your father claims he doesn't either, your mother ran off from The Valley without a trace when you were about eight. He stayed at that house, and by the time you were twelve, he was back with his first ex wife again.

 

It wasn’t until their re-reunion that you and Kankri would even learn of each others’ existences.

 

You’d say your father and stepmother argue a lot, but the two of them are hardly ever home anymore. Your dad works until almost eight or nine in Riverside every night as a software developer for Xoracle and Kankri’s mother is a nurse who finds any reason she can to be out of the house off the clock. Kankri, who claims to hate “strained claims of domesticity, and seeing my beautiful mother neglected,” is somehow always out, too. The jerk and his appropriated friends.

 

But Bitter is especially your goddamn middle name lately because Terezi, well, let’s just say when she was on top and had a thumb in your affairs? There was nothing you could think to complain about at all.

 

There were days the two of you just got shitfaced-sugar-high on soda and candy, sat around at the local park at 4 p.m., smoking spliffs on the chipped up swings you used to jump from on grade school class field trips, and trying to catch bees. Though she was partially blind in both eyes (at least, before surgery) she caught honeybees professionally to make her line of cannabis-based sweet-smelling Etsy products. That smelled like a goddamn dream. Not that you ever used them, they were feminine products.

 

Whenever you lie still, in bed, her face and her laughter get to your head, the memories of her you can't get back a constant reminder of your failures to her and other such inadequacies. You’ll never forget the day she straight up told you she was going on another date with him. It was three days before the start of spring break and she and you were in your bedroom playing Xbox. Well, you were playing, she was not-really-watching and tapping away at her computer for hours; as of late, she’d been in your bathroom, for almost a full hour now. Probably getting it all hotboxed which meant you were going to have to wash the rugs and curtains in there again. Talking in that raspy voice of hers on the phone with who you assumed was just one of her cousins or something.

 

When she finally came out, red glasses covering her eyes, she said something.

 

“Wait, what?” You were actively engaged in kicking the virtual shit out of consorts and zombies, getting high as fuck and cursing your gamer friends out on your headset. Sitting your unshowered ass in the bean bag chair the way you had the whole weekend.

 

“I said, I’m going to out Raleigh’s with some people,” Terezi repeated. “Since you aren’t ever any fun anymore!”

 

“Terezi--oh fuck, dammit, Sollux, can’t you see I’m reloading? Of course I don’t want us to fucking fail this mission do you know how much grist I got stacked up for this? Give me a goddamn second here.”

 

When you had a moment you stared up at Terezi and realized your girlfriend got really dressed up for this. She pushed her hair behind her ears, adjusted the waistband on her shiny jeans, when she noticed you noticing her.

 

“Terezi, I don’t—what?” She’s so so pretty and you’re so selfish, _shit_ , how did you think this was going to turn out?

 

“Who are you meeting at Raleigh’s?”

 

“Some people from school. Vriska. Meenah. Tavros. Dave.”

 

“Oh.”

 

Hearing her say his name again, spoken so casually, made you feel like you could just curl up and die.

 

“Well don’t get almost-murdered by Vriska like Tavros did that one time,” you said, fixing to put on your headset to block the reality from your dream version of her. “Don’t get caught up in one of Dave’s long-winded cluster-fucks.”

 

“Seriously? That’s all you’re going to say? It’s like I’m not even dating you anymore! You don’t care if I go out, you don’t care if I stay here. Do you want me to be with him?”

 

Terezi slammed the door before you could even answer. It was hard to tell her, you thought as you watched her small form retreat into the white car who suddenly came to pick her up from your driveway, that you didn’t want to—or better yet, you couldn’t—be mentally present with her lately because of your depression. Depression weight gain and Kankri and his mother moving into your dad’s house and realizing with each passing day, that while Terezi was gorgeous and fiery and everything like your best friend, she wasn’t the cure for your sadness.

 

It was even harder to watch Terezi go out with Dave not just the one time, but over and over. You knew things were distant between you and her, you knew your depression was starting to become a problem that needed attention. But you hadn’t expected her to openly flirt with her ex again.

 

You hadn’t even seen the two of them talking lately. Had you? Of course you’d seen him checking her out from a distance in the halls, never gracing either one of your with a ‘sup or hello as you held you arm around her just a little bit tighter every times. Staring, blatant and smug sometimes, but from behind his ridiculous computerized shades, rapping something or other to John. You got it, he and Terezi had been together once—well actually it was more like three times—and of course he stared: she was fifteen, razor-sharp, a total knock-out.

 

And guys like Dave did not see things called ‘boundaries.’ Guys like Dave got good chances handed to them over and over no matter how many times they broke them-—

 

They were friends on Snapcrap and Chumbook. You saw the way they liked all of each other’s photos on the surface, who knows what emojis, selfies and slick, quick replies were shared in invisible sessions. Her date with him and all of his fancy junior friends that apparently she was still in cahoots with, even as she posed as a kiddie freshman outlaw with you, Kanaya and Rose--the thought of those hands of his around her waist--it crept on your mental security like a nightmare.

 

The first two times she went out with Dave without you, you could safely assume it was a group setting. The third time you asked her, though, her answer was more than you bargained for.

 

“I don’t understand why you’re getting so upset!”  She stood in your kitchen where she’d apparently come to make a fool of you.

 

“Because my girlfriend is going out, alone, with another guy and not just any guy, the most excruciatingly phony trolling-est-troll to ever grace these premises, to a goddamn bourgeoisie ice cream parlor all the way in Studio City. You seriously don’t think I’d be upset about that?”

 

She didn't say anything, wiping tears from her crimson-lined eyelids. If she hated being around your sad sack so much, why did she still come around you and your dad’s empty household?

 

“Is something going on with him?”

 

She sniffles. “Dave and I kissed two days ago.”

 

The rest of freshman year, seeing them together as if you had never been tore you apart. So much so that Kanaya and Rose had to practically beg you not to march right up to her and tell her you were desperate, you’d do anything, was it your hair? It was all in your head, the absolute tirade you wanted to go into, all “this isn’t fair” and “why is she touching him” and “why do other people always get to be happy and I don’t.”

 

But time dulled your anger to numbness, and time kept you from chasing after her. She looked happy, happier than she did with you and the summer you spent without her, never letting her know your regrets made you realize a lot of things. Like Dave Strider only keeps girlfriends for a maximum of three months, and by August, Terezi’s official thing with him had slipped its way out of their Instagrub feeds. Her relationship status on Chumbook was single, but rumor had it, things were still going down between them.

 

This was what she wanted.

 

 

♋️

 

 

The midnight hour of 94.4, WBFN roars from your stereo speakers on your nightly commute up to the station. Somehow your dad lets you drive his retired ‘89 Acura - now fitted with a tire - to and fro for your work even though, at sixteen years old, your California driver’s permit disallows you to be out alone at this time. You stop at the gas station just before Valley Blvd. turns into the winding, mountainous Ensena Rd., pipe down a .50 cent coffee and buy greasy snacks. The fake I.D. you got from Equius’s dark web connect and the three days of stubble you sport on your cheeks right now lets you buy Malboros and cherry-flavored swishers. The quiet Chinese man who owns this place has never questioned your late-night presence in it.

 

Inside the station, Equius is seated at the console messing with various sliders and Nepeta and Sollux are sitting on the floor passing the bong back and forth. Their laptops and an unfinished Lords of Waterdeep board game lie between them. Grumbling your greeting, to which they just wave, you walk straight at your desk at the rightmost corner, flip open your purple Hustkop computer, and tweak administrative stuff on the Quadrant site like member update notifications, “we’re about to broadcast!” tweets, et cetera.

 

Nep and Sollux are deep in complaints about the state of the CS lab at their underfunded Ensena public school.

 

As they ramble on and on in-joke, you try not to stare at your friends so frighteningly amicably, fondly. Their eyes are getting so red right now. You wish you could be as blasted as them but you can’t get too paranoid when you’re on the air. That was definitely a thing that happened once and you don’t think they'll ever let you live it down.

 

The hours you spend in this warm, familiar, log cabin of an office—the sleepless nights you're here furiously transcribing broadcasts and writing, writing and re-writing new ones in tattered old notebooks—the code you compile and compile it until you break it even worse than it was broken before, and Sollux has to bail you out but not without schooling you first on all the ways in which his hack and life skills are superior—all this trouble you go through is not for nothing. This is a career, not a hobby. You take all the bullshit you can during the day, emo it out and drug it up and do Xbox or homework, until it's finally time to come and be KK: to be a goddamn motherfucking sixteen year old professional, damn it, who's basically an unpaid intern and has to work the graveyard shift and sleeps a grand total of three hours a night, but this experience is going to get you _so paid_ one day. Then  ~~Terezi~~ all the girls might flock to you instead of Mr. Insincere Strider.

 

Hiding as the bittersweet-talking KK _has_ given you the chance to be an Anonymous Attractive Person. You don't know what your listeners think you look like and many have some frighteningly hilarious guesses. But no one can exactly peg you, and you like that. On Quadrant it doesn’t matter that your black hair is so matted you can’t get a comb through it, your eyes so large, the shadows beneath them make caverns of your cheekbones. It doesn’t matter that Sollux, Nepeta, Equius and you are a bunch of no-name brown kids from Ensena. Well, you’re from the Valley, but you’re practically the only family of color on your street, and your dad is in six figures of debt.

 

On Quadrant all that matters is your voice. Your style is painfully honest and to the point, but it still draws in kind, authentic conversation.

 

But probably most importantly? This job is a cultural thing for you. You’re not a racist or anything but there’s something particularly salient and rescuing about having other friends who are Latino-Filipino, even if Sollux is only the latter half, and Nepeta and Equius are mostly Indigenous. Family is important, but sometimes you can’t be born into a family that nurtures you. You find comfort knowing there are three other teenagers out there whose parents just let them disappear into the middle of the night for such superfluous projects.

 

Eventually your friends ask you why you seem grumpier than usual tonight, and you explain to them, with as few details as possible, the thing that transpired with Terezi.

 

“Damn KK, the didn’t have to thcalp you like that.”

 

“I know.”

 

“This doesn't seem like something she would do," says Nepeta. "I always liked GA. The few times you even let her come around! Also she was much better at Waterdeep than Sollux. Sorry!"

 

"Bite me. Thtop, I don't mean literally bite me!" 

 

“Anyway, Karkat, this is like that time Equius tried to do something nice for Aradia!" says Nepeta.

 

"Which time," says Sollux, "the time he failed hellth of fucking mitherably in doing tho? Oh wait, that wath every thime!"

 

"I don't think we should be discussing this, " says Equius.

 

“He made her a life-like robot in her image, thinking it would be a purr-etty sweet gift for her birthday! But turns out she thought it was purr-etty creepy."

 

"You know that might also have something to do with the fact that it blew up in her fucking face!" you say.

 

"I swear that was never the robot's intention."

 

"I don't see how this relates to me."

 

Equius kind of terrifies you to be honest. Freakish levels of genius, painstakingly loyal. He’s been going out with Nepeta just about as long as you’ve known her but he’s always just been really hulking and brooding and strong? Plus his impossibly long, stringy hair is dyed blue and he wears cracked, unreasonably dark sunglasses inside. You also aren’t sure why the twenty year old is so okay with you co-opting his project.

 

“To be truthful,” he said during your first week at the station, “I was dreading having to record a voice component. You’re doing me the udder-most I mean utmost of favors. I owe you my life.”

 

“I’ve seen it, no thanks.”

 

At one thirty you all start sheepishly shaping up, acting like you have somewhere to be. Equius prepares the stream as Sollux and Nep work up the next security patches, and you spend your designed pre-show half hour as a user of Quadrant. Your username on the boards is ifIhatemyselfsomuchwhydontIhatemarrymyself. As moderator, you’ve allowed yourself to bypass the 20 character name rule. This evening in particular, you join a conversation between three users live-drawing [stick figure cats](https://lh3.ggpht.com/_bChfjNQzX3M/TTQmIwAzVtI/AAAAAAAABpM/HqC4O0a8njI/w700/now_5.gif\)) who are gradually escalating the mass and difficulty of their gymnastic team stunts. Apparently this battle has been raging nonstop in their network, where they have a one hundred and fifty day draw-a-day streak.

 

“Before you go on the air,” Equius says to you now, “I think there’s something you should see.”

 

On his computer he shows you there are seventy five new listeners in Ensena alone today and thirty two new ones from Valley. You stare at the blinking red lights on the map, too close for comfort, and try to measure just how far away they live from your house. It’s intrusive.

 

“Jesus, will all of you stop looking at me like that?” you say. “It’s fine, I’m not going to let myself be chased off the air by some catty fourteen year old freshmen who I’m sure heard the broadcast and will click off the show in five minutes.”

 

Nepeta, Sollux and Equius all exchange a look as they put on their headphones and begin the countdown. You have to say something about what happened today. Right? Better yet, maybe you don't.

 

Equius holds up three fingers, then two, one…

 

“Good evening, and welcome to this installment of Quadrant. Whilst dabbling in the little-known art form that is ridiculously high-stacked ASCII-cats performing coordinated pyramid stunts - with Quadrant user britneyspearscansuckit and her friends, shout out to them - I realized the benefits of step-by-step, side-by-side, logically-flowing group efforts. Whether they be friendly, romantic, sexual, or drawing-twenty-kittens-power-lifting-other-kittens efforts, there’s a saying: that it takes two, to tango. But what about when it takes two or more?”

 

“Who better to find out the answers to this question but from you all, the shippers? Tonight, we’re going to start and end our show with the caller portion. Tonight, you are my stars, and I’d like your insomnia-riddled open minds to school me.”

 

“Already we can see that we have a few new listeners joining us tonight, so welcome, and, um—CT, TA, what the fuck? Are you seeing this right now?”

 

“I don’t know, man, I’m theething it too.”

 

“That is a lotta-lotta-lotta-lotta people,” says Nepeta.

 

“I don’t believe it,” says Equius.

 

Nepeta and Sollux maximize the windows on their desktops showing a live map of viewership. The numbers are skyrocketing hundreds by the second with listeners from all over the east coast and the South! At your desk, you watch in shock as the all ten of the lines on the landline light up and blink in bright green repeatedly, signaling ten simultaneous calls and who on earth knows how many more holding.

 

Your stomach lurches as you try not to relive and imagine the laughter and sniggering faces of the day.

 

“Wow, whoever’s doing this out there right now, thank you?” You’re making frantic, frazzled eye contact with your friends who look just as frantic. “We’re hoing to try to get to as many of you as we can in the hour.”

 

“ _Hi, KK! I’m Roxy, I’m calling from Texas.”_

 

“Roxy from Texas, nice to formally make your acquaintance.”

 

“ _I’m calling because well, first of all, last night when I saw your show on being parodied on Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff I just_ had _to take a look at it. But you know what? I went back and listened to all your archived posts, and I actually really, really like the show! Second, I just wanted to say that I’m in open relationship with my boyfriend right now, and it is the tits!”_

 

“ _Holla!”_

 

“ _That’s my boyfriend, his name is Vegas.”_

 

“ _As in Vegas, Las Vegas.”_

 

“So Roxy from Texas and Vegas Las Vegas, thank you for the compliments and what is it about your relationship that _really_ makes it work? And wait, hold that thought. Where did you say you found our address?”

 

As Roxy repeats the name of the website slowly, Nepeta and Sollux are on it before you can even mime the word. In seconds they search through several global engines until one of them pulls up the site, begins scrolling down it.

 

Fucking Dave Strider.

 

“Thweeth Bro and Hella Jeff ith a roathting thite at bethth to be honetht," Sollux tells you off the mic. "Thith art lookth like thitthainth!”

 

“Um, Karcatnip? You might want to read what Sweet Bro Hella Jeff said! Or well, drew. I should really give him some lessons!”

 

You can’t read chicken scratch from here, but it’s obvious to you that the screwed up, MS-Paint-quality blocks on this website are visually his handiwork. You can tell by the intentional high-contrast ultra-sharpen, deliberate misspellings in neon Comic Sans, and the panels that fall out of sequence, landscapes pouring and spilling out of guidelines, progressions that make absolutely no fucking sense. In fact you swear that you’ve seen him drawing these weird looking characters on notebook backs and various wooden desk carvings since he was in grade school.

 

“ _It works because_ _he and I are totally in sync_ _.”_ Karkat jabs a finger across his throat at Nep and Sollux who really need to keep the showing-him-shit-that-makes-him-pissy-while-he’s-on-with-callers thing on the down low. _“_ _We’_ _re in sync when we’re not even together!”_

 

“How so?”

 

“ _H_ _e always knows what I’m going to want from the vending machine and brings it home before I can even call!_ _It’s not like we’re never going to get jealous, but as long as we talk about it, no one should be able to define what we can and can’t do but ourselves!_ _Don’t you agree?”_

 

“I emphatically and wholeheartedly agree, Roxy. Jealousy is one of those things I can’t wrap my head around logically, like of fucking course a person wants to have their own life and space, and it’s like if we could just stop—the _feeling_ before it comes, and try to remember that we have brains about ourselves. Maybe we could see our way out of it.”

 

“ _Exactly! You should join Vegas and I sometime, KK.”_

 

“While that offer is more than mildly tempting, I have homework and can’t go to Texas on account of I’m a Mexican, and Donald Frump. Need I say more. You guys are great, though.”

 

“Next caller, thanks for losing sleep over Quadrant. To whom do I owe the pleasure?”

 

“ _This Dave Strider and John Egbert--” “Hi!” “--calling from a city near you.”_

 

Son of a bitch.

 

“Dave, is it? John?” you say, trying visibly not to looked freaked out. Probably failing. Equius, Sollux and Nepeta frown at you questioningly as you fumble and scramble at your desk for a loose piece of paper and a marker.

 

“It’s nice to meet both of you here for the first time ever in existence. What can I do for you?”

 

“ _We’re here on behalf of Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff, the Internet’s ultimate provider of quality comics, cheap tricks and lulz. Unfortunately this is a warning that your shit has owned by the SBHJ author and within the next 24 hours, there are no takebacks. No calling Mommy or Daddy if you start seeing double and projectile vomiting in dumb anticipation of what we’re going to do next. If you don’t accept my challenge, my followers and I lay in wait to flood the Quadrant hotline with sick beats and Striderian wisdoms._

 

“ _Now ladies, yours truly is five ten, a buck fifty five, and Texan through and through with a crow’s beak where my nose should be and kinda got baby fat goin’ around my ankles, but that’s water under the bridge unless you’re one of those foot fetish people. Not saying there’s anything wrong with liking feet, but wait fuck maybe there is something wrong about feet. I don’t know._

 

“ _Anyway if you think I sound hot, you should take a long hard look at my partner John here. Tall, dark and devastatingly handsome, his beaver teeth are so shiny and large, and he’s so hairy that lately I’ve seen woodland creatures taking up residence in his chest thatch.”_

 

“ _Hey, some people are into that!”_ John chirps.

 

Holy mother of _fuck._ Your jaw hurts all of a sudden. Even here this tool has managed to find you and the world just really does keep getting smaller. You feel your throat closing up as you scribble HELP ME THESE TROLLS HAVE A DEATH WISH on the paper you found crumbled behind your Hustkop, and wave it in the air at your shrugging friends.

 

“If the two of you spectacularly ineligible bachelors don’t mind?” you say into the mic, as Nepeta and Sollux mouth vague supportive threats towards your virtual assailant. “I’d kind of like to know what these, what did you call them? ‘Striderian wisdoms’? Are and how they relate to me and this program.”

 

“ _Okay listen,”_ Dave says now, all business. _“I know that you know that I know who you are.”_

 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

 

“ _I’m offering you this olive branch of_ _troll-_ _friendship but you’re recoiling from it like it’s a ten inch_ _vibrating dildo I’m waving in your face_ _._ _L_ _ike I thought this was what you wanted_ _you sent me and all your other sugar daddies your Amazon wishlist_ _and I_ _triple_ _checked_ _but_ _you’re like_ _,_ _no baka, stop,_ _I said six inches max.”_

 

“ _Speaking of things in people’s faces, wanna check out this prank my Bro’s been doing lately?”_

 

“No.”

 

“ _Cool listen to this.”_

 

[A track from a hastily recorded YouTube video](https://streamable.com/59t0) starts playing in your headset.

 

“ _Get your camera out of my f**king face.”_

 

“ _Oh, you think it’s too dirty? TV’s too dirty? For the children? Are those your thoughts? But we’re—we’re doing it for the children.”_

 

“ _Why you got the camera on me, sir?”_

 

“ _We’re trying to learn it for the kids.”_

 

“ _What are you trying to learn?”_

 

“ _Well why are you following the camera around, that’s what I don’t understand--”_

 

“ _You’ve got the camera in my f**king face!”_

 

“ _Well you wanna be on it, it seems like. I just want to get your opinion,_ for the children.”

 

“ _Please, I’m begging you nicely, get the camera out of my face.”_

 

“ _Okay but you’re. You’re following the camera. See what you’re doing? Do you notice that you’re moving towards the camera?”_

 

“ _Move the camera away--”_

 

“ _But you see how you. The camera is moving somewhere and you’re being attracted t_ o _the camera. Your body is being magnetically attracted towards the camera you are verbally attempting to repel. You notice that?”_

 

“ _This is a f**king violation of privacy--”_

 

“ _But let’s discuss the contradiction--”_

 

“ _Take the camera away from my face!”_

 

“ _But we’re just walking around the park minding our own business!”_

 

“ _You’ve got your camera up in my mouth!”_

 

“ _Your mouth is faced towards the camera. You’re consciously choosing. You’re consciously making a conscious choice to talk towards my camera. Did you notice that?”_

 

“ _[inaudible expletives].”_

 

_“Will you please, I’m begging, I’m asking you nicely to please, turn your face away from my camera! Please don’t point that face at my camera! You’re breaking the camera!”_

 

This is farce is becoming so ridiculous, you can’t even bring yourself to speak! Nepeta, Sollux and Equius are doing what they can but they’re all stupid stuck on the rapidly climbing numbers and increase in traffic on the servers. The hits on the site are up to 100,000! 15,000 streaming live.

 

You try not imagine that many actual, human faces watching _you._

 

“ _Oh man, if you could see this video right now.”_ Dave laughs infectiously. “ _This dude gets so_ _belligerent,_ _I lose it every time_ _.”_

 

“You know, Dave, I don’t know what 4chan-recesses of the Internet you crawled out from but it’s been a blast having you with us tonight.” From his desk Sollux rejects that sentiment by sticking both his middle fingers up. “Really, it has.”

 

“ _I like doing this with you too, KK. Y’know, I think we’ve got a real good thing going here, good vibes. Kinda know what I feel like doing, Johnny boy?”_

 

“ _Nope, can’t say that I do!”_

 

“Jesus, you’re still on the call?”

 

“ _I think it’s time to lay down some law, and by law I mean music and lyrics_.”

 

No, no, God, no.

 

“ _I’m going to lay_ _it_ _down so_ _tender_ _,”_ says Dave, “ _like it’s my son and I’m a single_ _dad_ _working nights at a bar. I sneak in to kiss little_ _Jimm_ _y_ _every night before I go_ _,_ _k_ _iss him_ _sof_ _tl_ _y_ _on the_ _fore_ _head, t_ _ell him_ _M_ _oms_ _went out for a_ _pack of_ _cigarette_ _s,_ _never came back._ _T_ _uck him in_ _all_ _sentimental_ _like._ _”_

 

“No, no, there will be no Eight Miles of rapping on my sacred goddamn show.” A ragtime-y hip-hop beat begins to play. “Is that a fucking piano I hear?”

 

“ _That would be me!”_  John supplies.

 

“ _My_ _Johnny-G is sick on them keys.”_

 

“If both of you don’t stop this white nonsense right the fuck now I’ll be blocking you permanently here and in real life.”

 

Dave then proceeds to have one of the worst (best?) rap battles in history, with himself.

 

“ _Though Dave may ring like a silver bell / And John softer like music claim / They can’t work the miracle / ‘Tis Karkat sets my heart a-flame.”_

 

As Dave and John alternate this chorus, the vein on your forehead thwacks beneath your skin to the beat.

 

“ _It’s Stri-dizzy from the big L.A. / And I’m calling in tonight ‘cause I got something to say / Trying to school my brother Karkat about getting laid / I seen this dude in real life, man, he gets no play / J-Eggy on the beat and that is fact / Who you heard saying white boys don’t know how to rap? / Heard your last girl been begging me to swing that bat / Yo, Johnny, did you hear that clap?”_

 

“ _Yeah I heard that clap!”_

 

“ _Can you work with that?”_

 

“ _I can work with that!”_

 

**\--click--**

 

_beep—beep—beep—_

 

“This, ladies and gentleman and all in-between, is why human reproduction and what kind of person you’re going to bring into the wretched world some day are actually important things to think about! Imagine knowing you were personally responsible for all of us having to hear that just now.”

 

“...All 19,000 of us?”

 

Nepeta, Sollux and Equius are now scrambling to handle the increase of requests to the server. Sure, you’re the entertainment, but when shit hits the fan? You’re just sitting there, sweating underneath your big headphones, watching your friends rapidly type and expel things, drown. You wonder why they care, why any of this is worth it?

 

“Oh look, our switchboard and phone lines are flying off the handle again,” you say. “For those of you that don’t know our program is a small and community-funded effort by PBS and others to conserve Ensena county, and basically we run a four-man gig out of a shanty fucking shack with antennas on it. I don’t know how many fake calls and hits and trolls you guys have generated but whatever point you’re trying to make in the grand scheme of things? Message not read or received! Let’s have some fun.”

 

You try your luck relieving a phone line of its misery.

 

“ _Yes hi, I’m a l’il lady from the south of France. I think I have crabs!”_

 

“First off you are obviously a boy masquerading as a girl and second off, Strider if you’re really going to keep this up, at least get that Pennsatucky twang out of your voice!”

 

“ _How dare you insinuate that I am a man? I’ll have you know I graduated top of my class in RuPaul’s Drag Race and I’ve been involved in numerous fashion shows in Paris, Milan. I have over 300 confirmed slays.”_

 

“On that culturally insensitive and probably transphobic note, we have a caller coming from line 4 with Nepeta who just said, and I quote, ‘I wish more queer kids would understand that just because we’re queer, it doesn’t mean we have to be ‘bussin’ shit wide.’ Caller, what do you mean by this, and can I co-opt the phrase 'bussin' shit wide'?”

 

The live stream message board, displayed on the back wall by Equius’s projector, reads something like this:

 

 _02:46:10_ wheredoingthisman1 said _How come no one is answering my calls???_  
02:46:17 lambcurrywiththeshot said _You are being so classy KK. F***these haters!_  
02:46:27 murdermelikeselena said _They are relly roasting your ass lmfao charr broiling you bro_  
_02:46:35_ fatnastytrashgirl777 said _Say more abt open relationships!!! Ur so funny!! Luv u! <333  
__02:46:56_ justmadethis2comment said _So glad SBHJ woke me up 4 this. Hav no idea wats going on rn m8 but its f**ing hilarious_

 

 

♋️

 

 

The shipping wall, SBHJ fans galore, has been updated thousands of times tonight. With depictions such as Roxy and Vegas’s joint wedding to a cute crabby crab, and Dave and John ruling over Earth as merciless rap gods, sporting Rick Ross beards and heavy gold chains and smiting the masses with their wicked flows. Also, dicks. Lots of dicks.

 

At 2:59 a.m., you give one last send-off after managing to keep the last thirteen minutes of your broadcast relatively free of Dave (but not free of the cesspool of human traffic that make up his blogs’ audience). Several minutes later you creep over the shoulders of Nep, Sol and Equius and stare into their monitors blankly, as they do fast analytics and damage control.

 

“I’m sure my boss will be calling about the increase,” says Equius. “You’ve made a popular enemy.”

 

“Yeah theriouthly KK, I don’t know who thith guy ith but he’th got more followerth than all of uth could pothibly ever dream of. At leatht half the new utherth he thent uth are junkmail accounth, but I don’t even care!”

 

Nepeta takes a break from her mining of data and her big heart-shaped eyes, bloodshot and gunning with sympathy, rest upon on your tired face.

 

“Was that guy one of the mean ones from school?”

 

“He’s nothing, and means nothing. Thanks all of you, once again and always, for temporarily making my life feel like somewhat less of a trainwreck. Let’s recap this in a couple of hours. I’ll set up the memo.”

 

“You thure, KK?”

 

“Yeah. I think I just wanna go to bed.”

 

When you get home, your phone connects to your Wifi and Pesterchum updates. You have several messages from Kanaya that you barely have the energy to read right now; your body is tired, but your caffeine-riddled mind is awake with anxious terrors.

 

Exhausted, you crawl into bed with your phone in-hand, reading:

 

_grimAuxillatrix started pestering carcinoGeneticist at 02:11:13_

 

GA: Oh

GA: Oh God

GA: It Appears You Have Been

GA: If It Makes You Feel Any Better Rose And I Are Currently Arranging The Funerals For

GA: Did He Just Say Your First Name

GA: Why Is He Rapping

 

This wouldn’t matter if your school and these people weren’t all you really knew. Strangers across the world, though they say that they’re there, are truly just hits, pixels, clicks and statistics.

 

Just words.

 

Tomorrow, in the real world, you’ll have to face the music.

 

GA: I Know You Probably Dont Like Me Saying This But An Outcome Like This Was At Some Point Inevitable, Irrespective Of Your Cautious, Clever Misnomer

GA: People Suck

GA: I Love You

 

_grimAuxillatrix ceased pestering carcinoGeneticist at 02:59:17_

 

 

_carcinoGeneticist started pestering grimAuxillatrix at 04:23:15._

 

CG: LOVE YOU TOO

 

_carcinoGeneticist ceased pestering grimAuxillatrix at 04:24:00_

 

♋️

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please watch [the video.](https://streamable.com/59t0)


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

 

 _I'm just trying to make my way_  
_O_ _n through the concrete jungle_  
_Who walks with me?_  
_T_ _ryna find connection in_  
_T_ _wo-thousand something ain't easy_  
_C_ _an't quit, take sips_  
_Wanna taste you_  
_M_ _ake wish, use lips_ _  
_ _Kissing strangers ‘til I find someone I love_

– DNCE, “[Kissing Strangers”](https://genius.com/11852073)

 

 

♋️

 

 

The aforementioned music you have to face this morning is not quite as trying as you thought it would be, but that doesn’t mean it still doesn’t piss you off.

 

Dave is looking right at you when you walk into the quad before class starts in the morning. In all his years he’s managed to practically never make eye contact with you or with any underclassman that isn’t from behind his hi-tech Spectacles, so you might be freaking out a little.

 

Okay, a fucking lot.

 

Glasses pushed up on his head, his ruddy crimson eyes are boring holes you into from across the room as you throw your heavy backpack down at your L-shaped table, turn up your music a bit louder. Around him his friends and other acquaintances are grouping, crowding, herding, and he’s at the center of it all. Today is Friday, and you hate Fridays, especially in September. They are especially annoying because they are pep rally days. It’s Labor Day weekend, the first game of the season, and you seriously do not understand the fucking appeal and draw of the pep rally. Why are they wasting time you could be in classes or doing literally anything else more productive than watching a bunch of your sweaty peers bash cylinders, and scream “GO TEAM!” By virtue of being a rich kid Dave is kind of in with the football team. Plus, his boyfriend John is the kicker on Varsity.

 

He doesn’t seem to be particularly talking about you to the people around him, his ~~perfect~~ mouth moving to tell a story to Tavros, Eridan, John and the rest of those a-holes. But all the while, he’s staring into your eyes.

 

Smiling slightly, as if daring you to challenge him on it.

 

You test this theory by getting up and tossing the trash from your morning snack near the dish return, to find his gaze follow you there and back like a hawk. It was one thing battling with him over airwaves, the brashness of your voice and your ability to garner a following giving you the clout to hold your own. But here, in the real world, in front of him? Dave is one of the most gorgeous stupid humans you’ve ever seen and you only mean that fucking objectively, okay? Subjectively there’s no protocol for the way his devilish smirk makes your stomach twist itself into a tight little knot.

 

As the first bell shrieks and you scurry, head down, to your homeroom, you think about something. You’ve always looked at Dave. It’s just before, he was never looking back. To be fair though, everyone stared when you were all kids, because his moderate albinism – and the bleeding eyes that went with it – made him a corporal rarity, a specimen.

 

What you never understood was why Dave was worshiped for his odd looks while you were often ridiculed for yours. In the fourth grade Cronus and Eridan started Karnkles because of your weight, and Tubs because of it, too, and your height or lack thereof.

 

“Can I ask you something?” A little fourth grade you approached David in the hall one time, wondering if maybe you two physical outliers could be friends. “Why do you cover your eyes so much?”

 

“How do you get by as a midget at this school without special accommodations?” When you (surely) pouted he held up his hands, said blandly: “I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being a midget, bro, I am genuinely concerned.”

 

Later you would learn (from overhearing him talk) that his eyes were especially sensitive to light, but it’s not like you knew that when you asked him. Sheesh!

 

At graduation and promotion that late spring, you watched from afar with your single father and cheap, wrinkled dress clothes as the Strider patriarch took photos of his ilk – Dirk, who was graduating from middle school, and Dave, who’d just been promoted to seventh, and won a national prize in the science fair – with a ridiculously expensive camera. They looked so goofy and carefree, posing like gangsters on purpose. You wondered what their life was like.

 

Back in the present, just after the bell rings to start lunch, Tavros rolls up to you in the hall in front of your locker. You haven’t talked to Vriska’s childish, good-looking Cambodian beau one-on-one since before his accident. That was almost four years ago.

 

“Hi.”

 

“Hi?”

 

“I just wanted to say, this is what happened when they chose, me.”

 

“What?” He was cute, but mind-numbingly cryptic. “When who chose what?”

 

“John and Dave.”

 

Tavros sticks his meaty hands in his pockets, anxiously averts his gaze. You realize the unease and restlessness you’re feeling from social interaction right now? Totally mutual. What is he trying to be an ally?

 

“I heard, uh, their show, last night,” says the bumbling junior. “A lot of us, actually, listened to it, at Peixes’ house.”

 

“God that is so fucking fantastic, Tavros, I just _love_ hearing that. Did you guys paint each other’s toenails and read horoscopes too?”

 

“I don’t think painting toenails collectively is, a thing people our age like to do.”

 

“No shit!”

 

“Anyway I, just wanted you to know, they don’t mean, the things they say.”

 

“Is that so?”

 

“I’m not just, saying that because I’m their errand boy or something.”

 

“I don’t believe that for several reasons, one of them being the fact that I find your judgment and overall perception of the world around you to be severely fucking impaired, not because of the fact that you’re _in_ a wheelchair, but because you’re dating the maniacal sociopath who put you in it!”

 

You think Tavros will be pissed at you for saying this (if the guy even can even remember what anger is), but instead he smiles.

 

“Vriska’s, not all that bad, once you get to know her. Maybe it’s, that way, with you too.”

 

Kanaya and Rose walk by in tandem as you’re taking your speechless leave from him.

 

“Kanaya, this is unsettling.”

 

“What is?”

 

“Nitram came up to me for the first time in years and told me ‘I might be nicer if people got to know me.’ What kind of after school special ass horse defecation is that? He also compared me to Vriska which for reasons I don’t need to explain to you, you were there you saw her push him in front of it, I resent monu-fucking-mentally!’’

 

The three of you shuffle through your usual lunch line, but you aren’t eating, at least not now. First, you have business to attend to, read: Nepeta, Sollux and Equius and you have a virtual meeting planned on your tablet.

 

 

CURRENT carcinoGeneticist [CCG] at 11:09:11 opened private bulletin board TEAM ADORABLOODTHIRSTY.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

CCG at 011:09:40 opened memo on board TEAM ADORABLOODTHIRSTY.

CURRENT arsenicCatnip [CAC] at 11:10:59 responded to the memo.

CAC: :33 < *ac brings cg his favorite powdered donut holes from the hole mole in ensena*

CAC: :33 < *she thinks this will ch33r him up, and she hopes it does, because she wants pets!*

CCG: OH COME ON, NOW REAL LIFE ME IS CRAVING THOSE HOLES SO MUCH MY MOUTH IS WATERING

CURRENT twinArmageddons [CTA] at 11:11:41 responded to the memo.

CTA: kk 2o glad two 2ee you’re 2tiill thiinkiing about a22 thi2 early iin the day

CCG: SHUT THE FUCK UP

CCG: I WILL BAN YOU FROM THIS MEMO SO HARD, AND NO, THAT IS NOT FUCKING INNUENDO

CTA: lol plea2e you need me iin thii2 chat, ii have all the number2 and 2tatii2tiics, plu2 your 2ite would be the mo2t puke iinduciing me22ed up excu2e for PHP wiithout me and ct

CAC: :33 < *ac snuggles up in betw33n cg and ta to get them to stop fighting!*

CAC: :33 < *she waves her big fluffy tail in her furends faces because she still has not received pets* (^._.^)

CURRENT centaursTesticle [CCT] at 11:13:22 responded to the memo.

CCT: D --> If it pleases my liege, I am here with the sole purpose of petting her

CAC: :** < ฅ^•ﻌ•^ฅ <33

CCG: I’M GOING TO STOP BOTH OF YOU RIGHT HERE RIGHT NOW BEFORE YOU SMOTHER US TO DEATH WITH YOUR MUSHY MONOGAMOUS FOLLY

CCG: LET’S GET DOWN TO BUSINESS, SHALL WE?

CTA: 2o fiir2t of all here are the number2 from la2t night2 2how

CTA attached file 2ept_4th_quadrant_2ux.xls

 

He and Equius detail average time spent on quadrant.com, average number of live users on the shipping wall per hours, hits to the archives, user logins per hour, how long they stay on, what activities they flock to, from which urls they were referred, et cetera.

 

CCG: I JUST DON’T EVEN KNOW IF ALL THESE NEW PEOPLE ARE OUR TARGET AUDIENCE

CCG: I MEAN SERIOUSLY, DAVE COULD’VE PICKED THE MOST FUCKED UP DEMOGRAPHIC ON THE PLANET AND FORCED THEM TO SWARM ON US

CAC: :33 < *ac is wondering when cg is going to tell us more about this dave purrson!*

CCG: THE FLIGHTY HUMAN CALLED DAVE IS NONE OF MY CONCERN AND SHOULDN’T BE ANY OF YOURS

CCG: FRANKLY HE WAS JUST THE SNOW THAT GOT THE BALL ROLLING

CCG: HIS PRANK CALLS WEREN’T EVEN THAT GOOD, I FORGOT MOST OF WHAT HE BABBLED ON ABOUT BY THE TIME MY HEAD HIT THE LAY SACK

CCG: SO THE WAY I SEE IT, THERE ARE TWO OPTIONS HERE. ONE, WE RECOIL FROM OUR SUDDEN EXPOSURE TO POTENTIALLY TENS OF THOUSANDS OF UNKNOWN PERVERTS AND PUT OURSELVES ON SOMETHING LIKE HIATUS UNTIL THIS DIES DOWN. OR TWO, WE RIDE THIS FREE PUBLICITY TRAIN LIKE HOODED BANDITS INTO THE MOTHER FUCKING SUNSET.

CCT: D --> How e%actly hypothetically would we ride it

CCG: IF THIS IS YOUR WAY OF ASKING WHY I CALLED IT A TRAIN INSTEAD OF A HORSE, I HATE YOU

CCT: D --> No I mean

CCT: D --> Now that you mention it horse would have been a much STRONGER word choice

CCT: D --> But unfortunately hiatus is not an option for me

CCT: D --> My entire grade and future career depend on my produ%ion of a sm00th, consistent, and considerable late night show

CTA: and you deciide two tru2t three braiindead iidiiot 2toner teenager2 wiith iit? lmao

CCT: D --> For you all, this can end when you want it to. I don’t blame you Karkat if it beh00ves you to leave this all behind, for privacy’s sake

CAC: X33 < behooves!

CCG: LOOK AS MUCH AS I WANT TO RUN AWAY FROM THIS SHIT?

CCG: I CAN’T

CCG: IT’S TOO FAR GONE AND I’VE INVESTED TOO MUCH, AND HONESTLY EQUIUS YOU’VE DONE TOO MUCH FOR ME

CCG: SO I DON’T KNOW, I GUESS WE JUST ROLL WITH THIS?

CAC: 833 < *ac takes the anxieties cg was just f33ling and rolls them into a fat tasty blunt*

                       _______________  
CAC: 833 < * ()__)____________))))) *

CAC: 833 < *she wants gr33ns because it was her idea, but she loves cg so much, she will let him have them!*

CTA: ehehehehehe, he fucking need2 iit two

CCG: WHILE I APPRECIATE THE VIRTUAL SENTIMENT AND YES I REALLY COULD USE A JOINT RIGHT NOW, BUT ALAS, I'M TOO MUCH OF A WIMP TO SMOKE AT MY OWN SCHOOL, WE NEED TO TALK SERIOUSLY ABOUT WHAT OUR NEXT MOVES ARE IF EVEN A FRACTION OF THE PEOPLE FROM LAST NIGHT RETURN

CCG: I DON’T HAVE THE SINGLE HANDED MEANS TO HANDLE THE BACKLOG OF SHIP WALL DRAWINGS NEEDING APPROVAL, OR THE MESSAGES CAUGHT IN THE FORUM SPAM FILTER

CCG: AND THOLLUX I KNOW YOU"RE BATSHIT CRAZY GOOD AT COMPUTERS, BUT YOU WILL NEED HELP WITH THE SERVER

CTA: roger, captaiin obviiou2

CAC: :33 < I have no problem coming on as forum co-moderator!

CCT: D --> We can also greatly improve the algorithm that dete%s spam to move things along

CCT: D --> As well as bulking our firewalls, adding a few more domains to disperse traffic

CCT: D --> Increasing bandwidth and memory on the server

CTA: 2ure that all 2OUND2 niice and all but where the hell are we 2uppo2ed to get the money to upgrade our 2erver???

CAC: :33 < will the station help us out you think bb?

CTA: D --> I doubt it

CTA: D --> They are already low on funds, and they already let me use their e%pensive broadcast equipment

CTA: D --> The program is mandatory. The website is extra

CCG: I’M A GENIUS. WE COULD SELL AN APP

CCG: GRANTED ENOUGH PEOPLE WOULD EVEN WANT TO DOWNLOAD IT

CTA: ii thought the poiint of thii2 wa2 two NOT be liike ciindr or 2cumbook

CCG: YEAH BUT WE CAN’T OPERATE LIKE WE DID LAST NIGHT ALL OVER AGAIN

CCG: I KNOW WE TALK A LOT OF SHIT ON WHATPUMPKIN, BUT THEY HAVE MONEY, AND WE HAVE NOTHING

CCG: AND BITCHES LOVE APPS

CCG: LETS JUST

CCG: SEE HOW WE DO TONIGHT, ALRIGHT?

 

After a few more charged ins and outs, you and your friends sign off, and just as you’re about to take a bite of your now-cold corn dog, you stop, mouth agape, as you see Dave, shades donned, standing right in front of your table.

 

“’Sup, killers?” There’s some kind of skateboarding video running in the rightmost corners of the glasses, and really, how the fuck does he see with those things on? “How goes things?”

 

“Dave,” Rose says. “Your word choices are evocative as usual.”

 

“Aw, thanks.”

 

He digs into his back pocket and pulls out three small, red fliers bearing none other than the Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff icons you recognize from that trash ass website last night. Along with ridiculous, obscene, horrifically obfuscated Spongebob memes, and the title, Under The Sea(Weed).

 

“Annual BTS party,” Dave says, handing you one each. “Dirk and Jake are still around so it’s gonna be a rager.”

 

It will not have been the first time you’ve been to the glamorous Strider estate, but you don’t like to think about that time.

 

“Is this a fucking joke?” you say.

 

“Is what a fucking joke?” he says.

 

“Why would I spend my hard-earned time, energy and gas to go to another one of your wasteful ass shindigs, when you want nothing to do with me unless it’s pissing around hiding behind a fucking computer?”

 

“Wow dude, you are really paranoid.”

 

Kanaya must feel you practically overflowing lava beside her.

 

“What Karkat seems to be trying to convey is, well, you haven’t invited us since we were about twelve.”

 

“You guys are sophomores now, I think that makes you less inclined to treat my Bro’s house like a kiddie Magic City. Just don’t puke in any of our palm plants, do any cocaine or steal any of my brother’s weird sex puppets, only for your parents to find them stashed behind your headboard and end up calling _my_ parent and trust me neither you nor them wanna know what my Bro does with those puppets.”

 

None of you can think to give his chatty invitation much else but silence. You’re putting on a big show about visibly sulking and acting uninterested, but then, Dave slips his sunglasses up and off his face, into his consummate, golden locks.

 

“I’m serious, y’all. We have a lot of fun.” His pale lashes flutter all butterfly-like and it makes you sick. “Come be a part of it, if you end up thinking about it.”

 

Just like Terezi a day ago, Dave is acting like you should just laugh this whole thing off, like he did you a favor last night.

 

You watch as Terezi seems to be talking hush-hush with John off to the side of their rather rowdy lunch group, and when Dave returns, fistbumping Meenah, you notice that Terezi and Dave exchange a look, but don’t approach each other. Terezi’s cutting her eyes at him sourly and eavesdropping as fuck on she and Egbert you wish you were, but sadly, you are in this great divide.

 

“ _Are_ you thinking about going?” says Kanaya, who you know is watching you stare at them.

 

“It’s not fair,” you hear yourself saying before you can manage it. “He can’t just act like that was nothing last night! I have to get back at him.”

 

“Why don’t you ask him why he did it?” says Rose.

 

“Because, that’s what he wants. He wants me to cower and spill my hurt feelings and hem and haw at his godlike mercy and his six hundred dollar rapper-promoted sneakers. I’m tired of being backed into corners by someone who’s not even man enough to face me IRL!”

 

“So, we’re going then?” says Kanaya.

 

You stare down at the flyer, the promise of booze and the knowledge you have about his lifestyle; it’d be fucked up, but there would be alcohol.

 

Plus Kankri would be jealous that you got invited this year, and you love that.

 

Maybe Terezi even would be, too.

 

“I’m thinking about it.”

 

 

 

♋️

 

 

 

At the end of the school day (and after the pep rally, which was as horrible as expected), Terezi walks up to you in the hall.

 

“Hi.”

 

“...Hello.”

 

You haven’t seen her eyes since the procedure. You can see the scarring, the places where skin bubbles and crinkles, but oh my god, she has glorious, full dark pupils, and the shape of her eyelids--you can’t, you can’t handle this.

 

“What?” you say, somewhat blistering, because she’s just staring at you, and hasn’t said anything.

 

“Nothing, it’s just, I can really see your face now. Your hair really isn’t all that bad!”

 

You try to find it in you to say something amicable, to appease the part of you that just wants to jump up and down and hug her because _she can see,_ but it doesn’t work out. Within seconds the argument flows past your lips, because every time you see her, you remember that she lied.

 

“Are you done, Terezi?”

 

“Done? What are you talking about?”

 

“You really didn’t have to sic Dave on me like that. It was immature, and I get it, he’s cooler and has more blogs than me and better moves in your hypothetical sheets than I ever will.”

 

“Oh, please!” Terezi is actually laughing at you. “I did not tell him to troll you. If I had known he was planning that, I would have told him to leave you alone, and that prank calls are lame and outdated. Dave does whatever he wants, whenever he wants.”

 

“Including you, huh?”

 

“Goodbye, Karkat.”

 

Rightly insulted, she walks away from you fast, down the hall.

 

“Terezi, wait.”

 

You say it long after she’s gone.

 

 

♋️

 

 

A long time ago, but not that long, Kanaya was helplessly in love with the rather abusive Vriska Serket. At the start of the sixth grade you and your road dog Kan were equally lovesick, her over the very-heterosexual Vriska, and somehow, you were jealously pining over Terezi and Dave both.

 

That year, Rose was a brand new transfer student. She had befriended Kanaya in one of her classes on the first day due to a mutual interest in Victorian literature, but not had yet made her lesbian move. That day Dave walked up to the three of you unwarranted to hand you a flyer for his party. The first one of Dave’s back to school’s you'd ever been invited to. Said Dirk wasn’t going to be there, so it’d just be a middle school party, but it’d be “dope, anyway.” Said he invited Rose in particular “because she’s the new girl and probably needs friends who aren’t goth.”

 

“Fuck you, Kanaya and I are not ‘goth.’ It’s called ‘scene.’ Learn some culture, you boring idiot.”

 

The house, to put it modestly, is seven bedrooms, three stories, with marble pillars stretching all about, at the very top of the gated Vellano Estates neighborhood. Folks say other places like theirs, though there is not one like that of Bro Strider’s, sell for a whopping twenty five million. The party is being held in what the robot maid referred to as “the den” when it gave you and Kanaya directions on the way in; it’s a glorified, granted fucking huge basement with bean bag chairs and video games, every kid’s paradise, and there are wine coolers and beer and even a small glass pipe going around. You and Kanaya are sitting on top of the expensive washer and dryer combo along the back wall together, away from everyone else with your watered down cups of rum and sprite. You both hated drinking back then and secretly pretended to do it to look cool together in front of people like Nepeta, Sollux, Equius, and now apparently Rose, your shared friends. Besides, Kanaya’s mother had dropped you two off here, and if she knew you were drinking, you’d be smited by God first, and then her. Kanaya was from a well meaning but hypocritical Catholic family too.

 

Rose is currently engaged in longwinded conversation with Terezi about something, and already, just three weeks in town, she’s managing to swoop in on Dave Strider’s girlfriend. That is something You Do Not Do, you remark to yourself somewhat jealously. Dave and Terezi were going out a second time and back then Dave never seemed to care about you one way or the other, which pissed you off because you hated Dave and his classically good looking blonde tresses and dirty-Southern accent. Hated Dave and John and Tavros and Gamzee, how they were all especially masculine and laid-back and cool no matter what they did, and always had girls around them, and were always the best at sports and music and clubs and shit.

 

On one side of the room Vriska and Tavros were sloppily making out as some of their friends neerby cheered and hurrah-ed.

 

“I’m voting for Tavros for homecoming prince ‘cause he got pushed in front of that bus!” someone shouted.

 

“I’m voting for Vriska ‘cause she pushed him!”

 

“I just can’t believe that she’s so straight and I’m so gay,” Kanaya said by your side.

 

“Well at least you know this Rose girl is at least partially yonically inclined. Or are her Doc Martens _not_ waving red flags? When are you going to ask her on a date, or maybe to marry you?”

 

Now Terezi and Dave were dancing across the way,  and you watched how Terezi’s thin, lithe hands slipped into the backs of Dave’s pockets. Dave’s ass was tight and round, not that you stared at it or something it was just he wore those jeans that made it protrude and spill and Jesus fuck you really needed to spend less time on r/gayporn. You didn’t _know_ why you liked watching pretty boys, or "twinks," okay? It wasn’t that you wanted to be in Dave’s pants, it was that you wondered what it felt like to be him, in that moment, feeling her pants.

 

What it felt like to be her, maybe, too.

 

In the end, you and your best friend made a promise.

 

“Let’s never end up like these assholes. Got it?”

 

“Agreed.”

 

Here you are today with those assholes.

 

 

 

♋️

 

 

Hours later, from the stretch between six and nine, you smoke several (too many) bowls and contemplate whether or not you should seriously go to this party. High you decides that you would also like to be drunk you, because fuck it, it’s Friday night, and you have a hard life. You've since developed a love of hard liquor because of it. You decide you aren’t going to dress up much for this, throwing on a dark gray hoodie and one of your nicer pairs of jeans. Done something to your hair for once, put conditioner on the ends of your curls to make them look springy.

 

Somehow tonight your reflection doesn’t terrify you nearly as much as usual. Your depression weight is back down after losing the thirty you gained because of Zoloft last spring. Who knew Terezi dumping you (and dumping some of those pills) would make you lose your appetite? The pills now stay unopened, for months on end; you’d exchange hypothetical mental stability for the ability to look somewhat like a slender human male again.

 

You were planning on driving the party, but apparently Kankri is taking the Acura.

 

“What? Why?” He’s standing in front of the garage door with (technically not) your car keys in his hands, staring at his uneven cuticles. “Why don’t you just use your car?”

 

“Because, I don’t want to waste the gas.”

 

“Wow. Are you fucking with me? You’re fucking with me.”

 

“Watch your language, please. And your noise. My mom is asleep.”

 

You roll your eyes laboriously to let him know how sorry you are.

 

“Let me use your car then,” you say. “I’ll put the gas back and then some. Or give me a ride.”

 

“I’m not giving my kid brother a ride to _my_ friend’s party.”

 

Upon arrival to the party, you realize it’s because he had to pick Cronus up.

 

You, Kanaya and Rose meet at Cherrywood park, equdistant from all three of your houses, and walk the twenty minutes it takes to travel up the steep hill to the Vellano Estates (on the back of the flier was a guest gate code for entry). All three of you walk into the glarmous, dim-lit, marble-covered foyer that is the front of this mansion and are greeted by [ferociously loud and upbeat music](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzZWXrlDj-A), strobe lights dancing fast across your faces. Wide-eyed and staring at the cacophony of party, you find almost all the juniors and seniors who matter thrumming in this crowd, and many of the freshly-graduated local state college kids, friends and company of Dirk and Jake. On your left, Kankri and some of his closer friends – Porrim, Aranea, Meenah, and Cronus – are grouped up by the spiral staircase a few yards from the door. When your shifty brother sees you approaching, he turns away from you suddenly, showing you the back of his too-big sweater; but Porrim, Cronus, Aranea, and Meenah all turn their heads in tandem at what he’s ashamed of: you. Suddenly they’re all making moves to crowd around and clown him, teasing and shouting at him, and then they drag him with them in order to come and greet you.

 

“Well if it isn’t shouty-shouts.” Meenah is grinning brilliantly at you, the beads and gold in her braids a jingling delight. You have always secretly thought she was hot from a distance. “We don’t know why it took us so glubbin’ long to realize if you’re Kan’s bro, you’re family!”

 

“Meenah’s only saying because she _just_ heard your show,” says Aranea, light-hearted teasing; everyone knows they’re girlfriends. “She’s a total fake.”

 

Cronus, who is lucky student body prez Meenah is his cousin, sucks his teeth, rolls his eyes, as Aranea hugs her.

 

“All that lesbian shit in my face, it’s bad enough I can’t get laid or a date until five tries or more in the Valley, why do all the hot girls have to be carpet cleaning?”

 

“Even if Aranea _was_ straight she wouldn’t tap your ass with a twelve foot pole!” Meenah claps.

 

Porrim wraps her thin tattooed arms around your brother’s waist.

 

"Why haven't you ever formally introduced us, Kanny?” she says, pushing his hair out of his face. “He's so _cute._ "

 

"Porrim, please don't hit on my brother in front of me,” he says but he’s not making any real moves to push her off of him, and you’re blushing furiously watching them. He’s so awkward and stiff, like a hanger for her to drape on, how can he let someone who looks like her just drape on him? “He looks exactly like me? I mean, kind of obviously? The thought of dating you is a strange and offputting idea. I might be the only person at this high school who hasn't revolved through your chambers."

 

Porrim responds to this by releasing her grasp on him and splashing him in the face with the rum, soda and rocks from her cup. Cronus, Meenah and others nearby ‘ohhhh!’ and jeer as Kankri recoils and shivers aggressively.

 

“Jesus fucking Christ, Porrim, why?”

 

Porrim smiles, wicked, and absconds as Kankri wails on and on to Cronus, who often appeared by his side out of no where, about how this was a two hundred dollar sweater his mother just bought him. Cronus makes no hesitation in helping Kankri dry off, finding ways to run his hands over the soaked, sticky wool as they stumble to a corner.

 

You can’t handle this symphony sober.

 

As the hyper-crowded party rolls on, you avoid your painfully regressive brother by scowling in a corner with beer/vodka, Rose, and Kanaya, those two drinking, giggling, adorable harpies. Attached at the wrist and hip as usual, both sporting black lipstick and lacy skirts. Overdressed, but probably still less out of place than you are. The center of the party takes place in the massive and glamorous Strider living room, where you unfortunately are to be close to the liquor tables. It’s impossible not to make eyes at the hosts, seated-dancing and drinking on an extraordinarily round couch, surrounding a gold coffee table: Dave, John, and their consorts, Vriska, Tavros, Gamzee, Eridan, Feferi and other usual rotating seniors, plus graduates like Jane Crocker and Calliope, all right next to the DJ booth where Dirk is Macbook-spinning, and Jake is grinding in his tattoo-laden arms rather obscenely. Dirk is all about the molly music rave scene and is Instagrub famous for he and Jake’s get-ups for them, usually tight shorts and garters and candy bralettes.

 

Eventually you have your third (fourth?) drink and…oh, the blur around your vision is becoming A Problem, the burning in the gut of your belly won’t quit. Sweat starts to coat your forehead. You can’t say you’re starting to mind the blunt numbness to your head, the shared body heat, and the visual of the throng of pale, slim teenage bodies swaying to and fro. You are however increasingly annoyed by how impressed Rose and Kanaya are by your brother's friends. Well, mostly Porrim, who they once deemed "womanist goddess."

 

“You should go talk to her.”

 

“Rose, talking would necessitate standing. My legs turn into jelly when she speaks.”

 

“I’m afraid I can’t go in your steed.”

 

“Why not?”

 

“Because mine do exactly the same.”

 

“Jesus, why don’t you all just have a threesome and trade your vampy horror stories?”

 

The mischievous look in Rose’s eyes, and her sly wink, make you immediately regret saying that.

 

As Rose and Kanaya shout-talk to each other you realize Dave is doing that maddening thing with his eyes again at you, glasses pushed up on head. The fuck is his deal right now? He’s nodding his head to the heavy-handed base, puffing on a statesmanly joint and you aren’t even close enough in this thronged room that staring at each other is warranted at fucking all, and yet here you both are. You hatefully stare back because you aren’t a little bitch, bite on the rim of your cup and let the harsh vodka slop around your tongue. You can’t deny it’s going to happen he’s going to do something to titillate and fuck with you or he’s just going to act like he is, which is titillating and fucking with you enough! Oh my god why are you even here.

 

Oh my god he’s standing up oh my god he’s walking over.

 

“Greetings, loved ones.” He nods at Kanaya and Rose and, like at school when he handed you the fliers earlier, now that he’s actually in front of you he’s avoiding your gaze a bit. Par the course. “You two scissor sisters look ravishing this evening.”

 

Rose lowers her eyes at his t-shirt. “I didn’t know Five Nights at Freddie’s, the artistic feat, was your cup of tea.”

 

“Are you fucking kidding me I hated that game, ain’t nothing fun about sitting my ass in a chair getting spooked the fuck out by misbehavin’ robots, that’s my life in this house as it is. I’m wearing it ironically, and because Egbert hates furries.”

 

Kanaya: “Are animatronics technically furries?”

 

Rose: “I suppose the only way to find out, is to mount one.”

 

“Y’all into reefer?” Dave takes a hit, attempts a pass. “Got this joint fresh from the Bro earlier, presidential shit.”

 

“No thanks.”

 

You’re almost surprised to hear your own coarse, vengeful voice. Your heartbeat is rowdy, fucking wild, and that one vein in your forehead threatens to thrum.

 

Dave’s finally looking at you. Smiling, offensively persuasive. That weed smells sweet as _fuck._

 

“I happen to know from a shared friend of ours that you like the devil’s grass, Karkat.”

 

“I like candy and chocolate too, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to accept them from a perv in a sketchy ass van.”

 

“Are you or am I the perv in this situation?”

 

“You, asshole! And also you.”

 

_And stop calling into my radio show._

 

Then he just stares at you silently for a while, eyes so bright and intense and it fucking freaks you out to look at them so up close. You’d think they were a medical marvel even if he was/is Satan.

 

“Come walk with me for a minute.”

 

He’s only saying it to you.

 

“Um.” No? “Why?”

 

“I get it, you’re mad at me about somethin’. Can’t for the life of me imagine what it is.”

 

“Hm, what a righteous convenience that is.”

 

“Come, I got this drink that’ll smooth things over, I promise. On the house?”

 

Maybe it’s the way his voice twangs that little bit when he poses the question, or maybe it’s the fact that he’s already walking away from you, assuming you’ll come or maybe assuming you won’t and one-upping you, or the fact that Rose and Kanaya are staring at you in corroborative disbelief. When you follow him, and when Rose waggles her eyebrows at you, you turn your back on her, show her both your middle fingers.

 

In the adjacent bar/kitchen, Dave pours you an alarmingly neon orange-pink drink. Behind the bar they’ve got two XXL coolers with hoses attached and at least three kegs spewing the stuff they call “jungle juice.” Dirk and Jake are practically famous for the brew that always changes based on leftovers they get from their Bro-dad. Each cup costs $6, but Dave is giving you this, like he said, “on the house.”

 

When he hands you the red cup you hesitate to drink it, not because you don’t want to be any drunker, because you do. But you look over at where you'd just left Kanaya and Rose, for respite from panic, only to find that they are now talking to Porrim on another side of the room (how do magic witches move so quickly?), hands clutched tightly as if in celebrity company.

 

You're on your own on this one.

 

Next you Dave is humming to himself and checking something menial on his Spectacles. You’re trying really hard not to buy this fake nice act (if it’s even that?) he’s pulling, but there is something about the way he’s holding himself right now—quiet, sifting through screens on his shades like a shy, awkward kid with nothing real to say. Sort of like you, now. His guard is down. Here’s your opportunity to bust him.

 

“So how do the face-sucking goggles work?” you say to Dave. “Were they worth the god awful price tag?”

 

“Oh, these? Here, lemme show you.”

 

He suddenly comes closer to your side than you ever imagined he would and he smells heady and clean, all dry amber and oak and bitter chrysanthemums, plus the lingering scent of top shelf marijuana. He shows you that the Spectacles are connected to his iThrone7 and he commands them to do his bidding from the phone via Bluetooth. On the internal display, he can use apps like Snapcrap and record using the external cameras tucked into the upper left and right most corners of the lenses, browse forums like Reddit, or run any number of VR simulations. He’s working on a way to program them so that he can blink his instructions.

 

“Dirk’s got like rudimentary code for it, I mean it’s not _good_ , but the kid didn’t get into MIT for naught. It’s gonna be sick with it once it’s all done. I’ve been practicing too but my eyelashes keep getting in the way of it counting blinks properly. Like damn it’s not my fault I was cursed with anime girl eyes.”

 

He needs to step away from you with that mind-altering soap-cologne mixture, so you back up, a little lightheaded, yourself. As he messes with the buttons and controls on one of the handles of the shades, your shaky hand guides the rim of the freezing cup to your nose, where you can feel the bubble, the sting.

 

“Do I even wanna know what you put in this bile?” you say.

 

“A little Malibu, a little Svedka, a little Crown Royal, actually you know what it’s mostly Crown Royal, like fifty of those five hour energy things and all the punch John Hammer-arms could carry out of Super Saver. I’m not saying you’re gonna have a heart attack and die from it but you might have a heart attack and die from it.”

 

The stretch of skin across his nose and cheekbones is spattered with freckles and seriously fuck this guy for having freckles on top of everything else. Dave starts to tell you about the time he, Dirk, Jake and John got lost in Vegas on the way back to their hotel when he was in eighth grade and all they had to drink was a thermos of the “juice,” and a water bottle of Everclear. You wonder how so many dumb people get to stay alive so long. Oh, that’s right, money.

 

“Anyway so Bro is still doing his jerk-off music conference thing and so we end up on the strip after having snuck into the breakfast barf-et at a ‘tel we didn’t even _go_ to, and Jake is yelling, like, about anything and everything, then we end up at this _other_ hotel and these old pimp looking dudes, like seriously canes, hats and the whole nine, give us these tickets to this 18+ magicomedy show, so of course we show up. In the middle of it John starts puking on the floor beneath his seat. Dirk got chosen to be cut in half, and have his appearance ripped apart on stage by a hilarious eighty year old trans woman.”

 

“No one questioned the fact that you all were just kids?”

 

“I’m sure everyone did, but Vegas is Vegas, and you know what they say. Plus, if I may be so bold, we were a couple of good looking kids.”

 

This is obvious hate-mongering from him. He takes a moment to dabble on the end of the joint (and no you are not paying attention to the wetness of the paper where his mouth was), and then re-removes his sunglasses, to let you know that he’s Really Looking At You.

 

You’re too frustratingly intrigued by this glimpse at his eyes again to bolt towards Kanaya and Rose now, tell them everything ridiculous that he just said.

 

“What?” you say, when he won’t stop looking at you.

 

“Just surprised you showed up, a l’il bit.”

 

“This may come as a surprise to you but I have heaps of a fucking workload in life, I am woefully employed working twenty hours a week, plus the homework and fakery I get served from the worst inbred high school on the planet on a much too frequent basis. So I enjoy any situation where I can get fucked up on someone else’s dime.”

 

“Even with me, on my dollar? Aw, so sweet.”

 

He passes you the joint, and you take it.

 

Your skin is hot. The drug hits your head and buzzes, spreads, makes everything airy, more colorful. Why is any of this happening? How drunk/high _are_ you, to be imagining a conversation with Dave like this? The burning of your stomach lining as you sip from your cloyingly sweet drink lets you know you aren’t imagining this.

 

“Come with me again.”

 

Dave invites you to come and play a drinking game with "everyone" at what he calls the King’s table, and like he is a magnet you find yourself following. Also you are Really High all of a sudden and just trying not to act like it. You’ve never been this high around school people before.

 

There are about a hundred cards laid out on the table and, you are told, by Aranea, that there are eight kings in the double deck. A giant World’s Best Grandpa thermos full of prematurely-stewing elixir sits in the center of the cards’ splayed circle. The yankers of the seven kings will pour a hefty portion of their drink into the thermos, until it’s full. The unlucky chooser of the eighth king drinks the whole thermos. They’re doing this, they're making this happening.

 

You’re trying not to look so embarrassing at this game. Each card means a different thing and everyone is arguing about what house rules should and shouldn’t be. The absolute fucking worst round is waterfall, where everyone chugs until their neighbor stops - the goal is to royally fuck over your neighbor, et cetera – but this elixir Dave poured you is like eighty percent liquor. Your head’s already swimming and you’re still sweating like a fucking nutbag under your jacket.

 

In the middle of the loosely structured game they (including Dave) do bumps of cocaine off somebody’s iThrone. They swipe their fingers on the glass afterwards, rub the powder on their gums too. Dave wordlessly offers you some during round two by tilting the phone slightly in your direction when it comes to him, and glancing at you quick over the shades. He takes your open-mouthed silence as a healthy declination.

 

Tension builds around that eighth king, interspersed with Meenah, Gamzee, Tavros, Vriska, everyone chiming in like a giant group chat, people moving in and out of the circle and you listening (and freaking out because Dave oh my god), and wondering if Terezi’s going to walk in or show up at all and how is nearly everyone in this group so frustratingly sexy in their own way? Even Gamzee with his weird, long limbs, that killer bone structure, broad hands that could crush your skull. Except your brother, he can kick rocks. Speaking of, he hasn’t been around much.

 

And neither has Terezi. You seriously thought she would be here, maybe that’s why you wanted to come to this. She hasn’t missed a party of Dave Strider’s, well, since the two of them have been friends, which is forever. Maybe her head or her eyes are hurting. Does she like it, being cured now? Is she, even?

 

The King's cup game soon turns into a twisted game of Jenga, where you stack wooden blocks and pull them out until the tower falls. In this version there are instructions written on each block that say things like kiss your neighbor for thirty seconds, tell your neighbor what their hottest body part is, and suck each one of your neighbor’s toes.

 

Dave is mid-monologue with Feferi and Eridan when he casually switches his seat to the empty one next to you. No no no you are freaking out and his joint is still burning slow, and god you want a taste of it again so bad. Shouldn’t it be boy girl boy girl? Dave is So Not Acknowledging that he’s doing this. What on earth is that four-foot glassblown contraption Dirk and Jake are handing to John right now? They’re also handing him a vial of something orange, and a blowtorch. Dirk is calling them “dabs.”

 

On the other side of you scrambles Meenah. She says she takes a liking to you because she’s “frond of” KK, and you’re so embarrassed to hear her call you that you can’t even say thanks. The turns at pulling Jenga blocks go rather disgustingly smooth, with each friend not giving a shit who gets who—demigoddess Aranea ends up making out with Gamzee Makara, fucking giant ass Juggalo worshipping weed head Gamzee Makara, with not much more than a shrug, and Eridan is in hysterics watching Tavros get turned on by sucking Feferi’s feet, finding this more an opportunity to roast him than it is one to bark about his ~~territory~~ girlfriend.

  
This can’t be happening, it can’t be happening but when Dave pulls his block, it has—nothing to do with you, thank fucking god. He ends up having to bite the nipples of the person across from him, who happens, just of course, to be John. The last thing you want to see right now is John’s pitch-black chest tangle so you face palm, practically shaking beside yourself in unrest (and you’re so, so drunk), as the two do their thing that lasts all of five seconds. Dave mock-gags as he sits down beside you and says, “just bros being bros,” not even necessarily to you, as John feels the need to tell everyone how homosexual that wasn’t.

 

Now it's your turn and their eyes are on you, not expectantly or particularly curious or shocked, as you damn near stutter reading what’s printed on yours. Something rather light given the whole of the pot, but incredibly overwhelming for little old you.

 

“Let the person to your right do a body shot off you? I don’t even know what that _is._ ”

 

All of a sudden two pairs of hands (both Meenah’s? Who else is touching you) help lower your onto your back as several people whistle, and Meenah stands wide-legged, baggy pants-ed, over your torso. She slides your sweatshirt up your rib cage and the even louder whistling from around you at that makes you sick (and hot). Aranea hands her a chilled tequila shot from out of no where, a lime wedge, and a ramekin full of cubed salt.

 

“Wait, hold on, what are you—mother of _fuck_ , that is cold!”

 

All of a sudden Meenah’s splashing your belly button until it’s liquor-full, bending down, her face in yours (and oh Lord are you sweating buckets, you don’t know if you’ve ever sweat this much your life).

 

“I won’t make you reel this out of my mouth, okay, shorty?” Tongues the lime wedge in her mouth, half-in, half-out, as she starts to sprinkle salt in a thin line down your chest.

 

“I can’t, I don’t know if I can ah- _hah_ —“

 

Her tongue, the little metal ball in it practically maddening, starts its slick journey down your abdomen and you’re terrified of yourself right now, to be on the ground, splayed out like this in front of them (makes you wish you could black out after this, and you would, if you didn’t have to work). Dave wears his glasses, cocks his head to one side, just watches. Her lips do this quick little suck along your navel and you have to shut your eyes, mumble a curse. As her friends applaud, and you lie trembling on the floor, she winks at you and laughs out fucking rageously, devouring the lime’s flesh.

 

After becoming officially overwhelmed by the increasingly friendcestual Jenga game you decide you’ve had enough of whatever it was Dave meant by inviting you to sit with them. It’s midnight and said party is somewhat winding down, [slower, ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6_YQje0vn0)[lighter music playing](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6_YQje0vn0) on the Macbook to signal a mood change. You haven’t seen your brother or Cronus since early on and that’s pretty low on your list of places to give a fuck to right now, but you know it probably won’t stay that way. Kanaya is now alone with Porrim near the bookshelves in the dining room hall, so Rose walks up to you where you stand dizzy as hell, propping yourself up on the wall with one hand, rubbing one of your temples with the other.

 

“Well she’s really engaged, isn’t she?” you say, when Rose tells you Kan’s wheareabouts.

 

“I think it’s adorable. She really is so caring. She remembers everything you tell her, even the minuscule. Right now they’re talking about every anarcho-feminist essay Porrim’s ever written for The Alternian Press, The Medium. She has them all memorized.”

 

“That is pretty adorable, god damn her.”

 

“So?”

 

“So? What?”

 

“I didn’t see how it went down exactly, but I saw you at the table in King Arthur’s court.”

 

“Pipe down, Lalonde, don’t let him overhear you comparing him to Arthur. Christ.”

 

“And, I heard a lot of yelling.”

 

“Okay?”

 

“Did Meenah do a body shot off you?”

 

“You already heard, seriously? I hate this place and these people, I hate, I hate.”

 

“Meenah’s quite the catch, fish pun intended. You should consider yourself lucky.”

 

“I mean yeah, and she’s not quite as big-headed and mouthy as I thought she might be from a distance? But I can still feel her dried-up spit on my chest, and I don’t consider that ‘luck.’”

 

Rose smiles, all too knowing.

 

“Terezi will hear about it, too.”

 

“Boo hoo.”

 

“Looks like she’s home sick, I saw it on Snapcrap.”

 

“Did you not hear what I just said? ‘Boo,’ and also, fucking ‘hoo.’”

 

“Yes, but wasn’t for her to hear what you wanted out of this?”

 

“I want for everyone to stop tip toeing around me and acting like I’m this fragile fucking cradle made of glass because I got dumped by my best friend and the best thing I thought would ever happen to me, five goddamn months ago! I get it, I’m small and I cried about it one too many times in public, but I’m sick of being the victim. I just want to be done with it.”

 

Rose is staring behind you, now, and you realize (and smell, jesus that smell) that Dave has just walked up.

 

“He didn’t hear any of that,” Rose assures you.

 

“I didn’t hear any of that,” Dave agrees.

 

They’re both so fucking sarcastic and sardonic that you can’t tell if they’re lying or not. You’re entirely too tired, in need of a shower and thinking about your migraine at this point, to care.

 

“What can I get for you, sir?” you say to Dave.

 

As if he wasn’t expecting that from you, Dave hesitates for a moment. Pushes his (currently running light VR) shades up a bit on his button nose.

 

“I’d like a double-double with grilled onions, no lettuce, no cheese, extra-extra-extra tomato like so much tomato the juices fly and splatter up my window when I bite into it, do add the sauce, and put like twenty five French fries in between the beefs, exactly. I will hold up this drive-thru line so help me god if I open my burger and there are not twenty five.

 

“Also, come with me again, outside. Last time, I promise.”

 

Dave asks you to follow him to the locked patio, where he gets moments alone to smoke a cigarette. Much to your horror, he closes the door behind you two. Out here you can see the magnificent closed-down back yard, complete with jet black pool, all sheet of glass with the moon at its epicenter.

 

“If you’re getting ready to push me off the balcony,” you say, “you’ve got it coming. I’m putting up a fight.”

 

“Honestly Terezi’s like still pretty into you.” Dave says this fast and not looking in your direction, and he says that it’s why, when Terezi talked about you “like that” on air, he went and pretty much immediately listened to and downloaded every podcast, every thing of you. Trying to find a weakness in you.

 

He sheepishly, after he takes a drag, admits: “You may or may not have a certain set of skills.”

 

There goes that faux shy thing again and this whole thing, inviting you to his party and trying to get his friends to share their drugs and crude hormonal urges with you? This is his backwards ass way of apologizing, isn’t it? Well, tough luck, rich douche. The only kinds of apologies you accept start and end with the words: I’m sorry.

 

And you, for the first time, have a thought:

 

_Am I something? Does he see me as a threat? Equal?_

 

But Dirk interrupts you then, the sliding glass door going _smack!_ against the wall.

 

“Oh.”

 

Dirk is wearing equally encompassing triangle-shaped glasses, and is perched before you two in waiting like a buff, twenty year old mercenary. Your stomach lurches at the sight of him, and those pale, ink-soaked arms.

 

“Dude, get in here, someone just broke Bro’s Congolese voodoo statuettes. Also, the foyer window.”

 

“Fucking fuckers.”

 

He turns to go in a flash, not looking back, and you are left alone.

 

 

♋️

 

 

The alcohol is starting to wear off and already your head’s starting to kill. You have to be at work in an hour and a half, and that kills too. You find manage to Kankri not long after you return from the patio, standing by himself in the main room. His eyes are wide, but only because he’s straining extraordinarily to make them so.

 

“What is wrong with you?” you say to his back.

 

He’s startled a bit to find you, but he sighs, deciding not to pretend you’re pure thin air for once you guess.

 

His voice is soft, feeble.

 

“I need you to drive.”

 

“Oh, well isn’t this rich. Mr. Goody-Two-High-Heels is too drunk to drive.”

 

“If you tell Dad, I swear, Karkat–”

 

“You think Dad honestly gives a hot steaming pile of feces where either of us is right now? I mean seriously, every blue moon he and his best buddy the pope pick a random thing on any given day to be pissed at us about, but he’s literally never cared how late or early I come in every night, even on occasions when I don’t come home at all. I could be in some back alley shooting craps with drug dealers every goddamn night for all he knows.”

 

“You certainly always _smell_ like a drug dealer.”

 

“Better than like baby lotion, tears and disappointment, like you.”

 

Kankri holds the keys up high with two fingers as if you should hold your hand open and let him drop them in. You practically snatch them instead. He scowls.

 

This is probably the worst time you’ve ever had to DD, though technically you’re not all that sober, because on top of having to take Kanaya and Rose to their respective spread-apart neighborhoods, you now have the luxury of having to cart Cronus Ampora back to the hole he crawled out of.

 

“Thanks for letting me smoke in your car, Kan’s bro.”

 

“Don’t mention it. No, I mean, seriously. Don’t.”

 

Fuck you, drunk!Cronus. Kankri’s seriously going to owe you you don’t know what for practically begging you to take his pathetic boyfriend home. You only agreed because you enjoy seeing him beg, and because you wanted to get an idea of the atrocities committed during Cronus’s first ride in this car, earlier. Which you have to take with you to work. It smells like hideous overbearing cologne, stale cigarettes.

 

The entire ride with him (you drop him off first, even though it’s way out the way), he rambles a horrifically self-obsessed monologue that consists of bragging on all the girls he accidentally touched tonight, drunk-singing along to the Future song on the radio, that you then change, and talking about how “vwonderful” his new mixtape’s going to be.

 

“I got this whole new sound going, I spent thousands on these new tapes to record it, hold on, let me pull up my Soundcloud—ohhhh, yeah, that’s that shit, right there.”

 

All the while Kanaya, passenger side, and Rose stare at each other like they’re from The Office though the rear view mirror.

 

Kankri is too (what is it, drunk? Stoned? You can’t tell, he looks this miserable all the time) to notice, object, or care, from his cramped, quiet position next to Cronus in the back seat. What does he see in this loser?

 

Once everyone else is gone, Kankri, irritable, insists that he’s sober enough now, and forces you to hand him the keys to drive. Exhausted, you let him, and pass out on the passenger side until he slams the door shut in your driveway.

 

Only approximately one hour before work.

 

Mistakes were made.

 

 

♋️

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I am tentatively planning on updating this kid about once a week! Most of the chapters are already written, they just need to be heavily edited. There will be nine, possibly ten chapters total. I am excite
> 
>  
> 
> Also Dave’s Spectacles are (kind of) a real thing, my coworker has them and they kick ass


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry that this took longer than my planned once-a-week release! This chapter is an important turning point in the story, so I wanted to take some extra time ;o)

_Ever since I lost my baby_  
_I’ve had this black suit on_  
_Rolling around like I’m_  
_Ready for a funeral_  
_One more mile ‘til the road runs out_  
_I’m about the drive in the ocean_  
_I’ma try to swim from_  
_Something bigger than me_  
_Take off my shoes and_  
_Swim good, swim good_  
_Take off this suit and_  
_Swim good, swim good_  
– Frank Ocean, “[Swim Good](https://genius.com/Frank-ocean-swim-good-lyrics)” 

 

 

♋️

 

 

For all that you’ve ragged on Dave’s blogs, you admit that you’ve never looked much at them. Glimpses of his homepages (which are almost always hipster or hypebeast in nature, ironic album reviews of shit rap music and pop-up skate shops that sell $500 ripped t-shirts) have caught your eye the few times in your school days you’ve sat behind Dave in a computer lab. But you would never stoop yourself as low as to actually _read_ them. You don’t have to visit them to know they’re useless garbage, and Dave has the rest of your high school, and the larger Southwestern, pale-faced, upper-middle-class “counterculture” to count on for likes.

 

In your humble opinion.

 

But as you drive through the mountains the in dark, on your phone, you view the parody of the Quadrant posted on SBHJ that was responsible for the spike in hits and calls. At first you refused to read his read of you because you didn’t want to feed him, never feed the trolls, plus very, very secretly, you thought his depictions might hurt your feelings. At best, as you scroll though it, you feel annoyed that this isn’t even funny, the whole purposefully-drawn-bad thing is so fucking 2013 are you right? Back when those rage guy comics were still “cool”?

 

No, Dave can’t make a sad attempt at being charming and funny and sharing his (really dank) weed with you at the party to mask this all over. Seriously, you say to yourself, why the fuck would Dave be trying to get to know things about you with any ounce of sincerity? His pointed interest in you tonight, the invitation into his superworld, was a joke, it is always a joke.

 

When you saunter to the office, Nepeta embraces you and then slightly recoils, sniffing your cheek.

 

“You smell like fun!” she says. “And vodka.”

 

“Are you drunk?” says Equius.

 

“Ahaha, thith it claththic,” chucks Sollux.

 

“No, Jesus fuck, what do you take me for? Just on my way to being disgustingly hungover. I don't want to even _think_ about the night I've just night.”

 

Equius says, “My boss is coming in to see us.”

 

“Shit. Now?”

 

Great, you are underage and clearly out of sorts, reeking of liquor and the station co director, who you’ve only met a grand total of thrice, will be here.

 

Sollux says, “Are we in trouble?”

 

Equius shrugs. “Not that I know of.”

 

The middle-aged director wanders into your soundproof room, then, carrying a clipboard (at this time of night? What for? The night station workers are motionless, overworking zombies, they don’t need supervision). He’s a bit blissfully oblivious and a lot like the popular conservative AM morning news guys the station boasts as their headlining acts. He can’t seem to tell anything is off with you as he quickly makes you gather round the small wooden table by the doorway, and you're grateful, because right now, you're seeing about three of him.

 

“How’s everybody doing tonight?” he greets cheerfully, too loud.

 

None of you answer, not even Equius. It’s two A.M., you’re all sleep deprived and spending your Friday night here instead of anywhere else. How does he think?

 

“Just wanted to stop by and tell you that wow, you kids have done some work here. You deserve some time off, with your families, for the holiday. We’ll see you Monday-technically-Tuesday!” He pauses, then, trying to be PC and failing: “Wait, do Indians celebrate Labor Day?”

 

“Sorry, that’s not what I came in for,” he answers himself, and you can see Nepeta and Equius share a secretly disparaging look, wish you could hug them. “In addition to giving you kids some time off, I’d like to bump your program up a few hours on the schedule, if you don’t mind that.”

 

“Certainly, sir,” says Equius.

 

“We’ll switch some things around, put that college gal with the show about agriculture on in your time slot instead. How’s midnight sound?”

 

You wait until he’s shut the door behind him to say: “Did we just kind of get promoted?”

 

“Don’t know if you could call it that, it’th thtill the buttfuck middle of the night.”

 

"Welcome, everyone, to Funfession Friday Night at the Quadrant. For those of you who are here for the second time only, welcome! Thrilled to have you back. Tonight's spread allows you to take a break from hesitations, pining, longing and all that other social-media-barrier-induced bullshit, and gives you a chance to get all that sap off your chest! Maybe the person you feel most about is ten thousand miles away, physically or emotionally, and there's something you're just suffering to tell them, but you can't. So, tell them here! Who knows, maybe, just maybe, they'll be listening in too."

 

 _"My Funfession Friday goes out to Slick_ , _shout out to you for always looking like ten million dollars, always washing my sneakers and leaving me the crispy parts of the brownie tray after we bake 'em. Dump your boyfriend already! Can you make brownies with_  him? _His deathly allergies to gluten and peanuts and anything fun say hello! Ugh, I love you, Slick._ "

 

_"Girl, I've been wanting to tap that ass since the third grade. But more than that I wanna love that ass, take it to a fine ass restaurant, drape it in the finest clothes, make love have a kid with that ass, I know I'm young but ten years is ten years, and you're still right here."_

 

“ _Hi. Sorry, this doesn’t fit in quite with the Funfession theme.”_ The voice of this male in his late teens, Australian, resonates in your burning ears much more than the others all of a sudden. Something about it seems. Familiar? _“Not at all, actually. I’m calling I suppose on behalf of my little sister Jade? This is her brother Bec. I hope this is appropriate.”_

 

Ah, that's what's familiar! Nepeta and Sollux stare at you pointedly and you have to admit, your stomach does a somersault, hearing her name. Jade was a girl who started calling the line the October of your freshman year, who was from the get-go a run for your money. Exactly the kind of emphatic, loud and particular caller you wanted to be in the business for.

 

“ _KK,”_ she said the first night she called, like she'd known you her entire life, _"I bet you've never had a girlfriend before.”_

 

“Oh? And how do you figure that, random Australian person I've never met before?”

 

“ _Good ears! I bet they can't tell what part of Australia!”_

 

“Gee, I don't know, that one part with all the desert? You people don't even have states or countries or anything, right? Like, you're just a slab of sand with white imperialists and incomprehensibly large insects?”

 

“ _I think you've never had a girlfriend because you don’t know basic geography! And you're afraid to kill the bug!”_

 

“That is straight up sexism, women can be fierce and ferocious and kill the goddamn spiders, and men can cower in terror at them while still maintaining their very in-tact and very attractive masculinity. Thank you.”

 

For two months Jade was pure rebellion and mad-scientist, off-tune music to your ears. She collected rifles and shotguns on the wall of her greenhouse-turned-bedroom and told you stories of how she scared off several potential swains when showing her collection. There was also the fact that she lived on an unincorporated island with less than a hundred dwellers, so there were very few swains to begin with.

 

"You know, I find it funny that Jade here is trying to give _me_ advice about not letting dreams lead me to make rash decisions.” The nights when she called you admit, you stayed on with her too long, and got a bit off topic, but still the conversation went in a good direction, bantering and trading barbs. This was when calls were still coming in slow. “When this is the same person who writes to herself in second person in her dream journal, like a self referential egomaniac!"

 

_"Well at least my sleep is productive! What’s the point of your mind doing all that work and creating these kick butt new worlds for you, if you can’t learn anything from them? I bet you’d have crazy, life changing dreams if only you were like me. And weren’t so obsessed with control."_

 

“No thanks, Jade, as fantastic as it would be to be a trigger-happy renegade living in the middle of the fucking ocean, I don’t think I’d like to fall asleep at the wheel at any point in my life.”

 

“ _That only happened three times, asshole! And my sleep walking dream bot promptly took over.”_

 

“Still don’t believe that’s a thing that you actually have, but okay.”

 

“ _Come and see it for yourself!”_

 

“Sure! When and where can I catch the next flight to some nondescript non-terrestrial rock in the Pacific?

 

“But anyway, I feel like the whole ‘I dreamed about my ex so it must bean something thing’ just all just gets too existential, and sometimes your mind wants things that don't make sense in the rational world, like there's taking a chance on a likely romance and there's recognizing when your dreams about this person might be leaving wishful thinking territory, heading into psychologically stalking territory."

 

_"See? This is you letting Skepticist KK sabotage True Love Waits KK!"_

 

"It's cute that you've named my multiple personalities, they certainly all get along better with you than they do with each other! But only slightly, they hate everyone pretty equivocally."

 

_"Na, I fucking hate Hasn't Slept In Two Days KK. If he's listening, tell him to kiss my ass!"_

 

"He's currently unavailable, but he'll be sorry he missed Vociferous Tone Deaf Jade, tonight, she is just a fucking de _light_."

 

_"Are you making fun of my accent?"_

 

"No?"

 

_"That thing you did, with your voice just there at the end!"_

 

"What thing?"

 

_"The thing! I heard that, that intonation, mister fuck face!"_

 

“Mister fuck face?” You barked out your laugh. "Seriously, I have no idea what you're talking about, now or ever."

 

_"Oh, shut up, you always do."_

 

You kind of did.

 

“ _Okay, I appreciate the thought of an apology, but if you already know you are going to do a thing, don’t apologize for it in advance. Just don’t do it!”_ She often called the show on various nights starting out with out of context responses to messages you’d sent her earlier in the day.

 

“Keep in mind everybody, this is her response to me apologizing that I can’t marry her sooner.”

 

“ _I’ve changed my mind, I don’t think_ _I would marry you, crazy. That would make_ me _crazy!”_

 

“’Crazy’ is a politically incorrect term, you failure of a millennial, and you’re insensitive for using it.”

 

“ _Ugh. Do you know what you should do? You should just marry yourself! That way you’ll never run  out of an argument to make, because with you, and also you, they will probably just last forever!”_

 

“No you were right, I am kind of crazy. But thanks for the apology anyway. I will cherish it, frame it and hang it on the wall of our office in memoriam.”

 

“It'th grothth how in love you two are.”

 

"Oh my god, Jade, did you fall asleep on the air again? Are you all hearing or should I say not hearing this? Wait, no, that is actual snoring. Our foreign princess resembles a sputtering, monstrous lawnmower when she's not among the waking." You were so stupidly into her, even though she was just a (raspy, quirky, beautiful) voice. "Goodnight, loser."

 

For some reason, she stopped calling in after that night. At 3 a.m. Jade woke up for a few minutes, drew one last picture on the shipping wall representing a rumored relationship between two obscure lesbian punk bandmates no one had ever heard of until then, and got several other users obsessing over the ship in her absence.

 

Long time Quadrant user/listener britneyspearscansuckit had called just afterwards, saying you were meant to be together. Other users speculated as to the nature of your digital relationship on the shipping wall. But the reality was this person lived literally halfway across the globe. The only international listener you had, who just found you by a fluke.

 

You wondered what happened to her for months, but had never known her as anything other than Jade gardenGnostic, which is not proper surname. Your frequent, late night google searches were futile, scanning through photos upon photos of girls named Jade from Australia on Chumbook, wondering if this particular girl with dreadlocks and handmade bracelets and a genuine, gap-toothed smile, was really her, or if you'd just decided it was, because you were that lonely, because you needed a human to dream about.

 

You forgot about her soon enough, when weeks turned to months and especially when Terezi finally started showing interest in you that January. It was just one of those things. But now you can't stop thinking in guilt about those times, in between, when Jade's voice would almost fade from your memory so you'd listen to her best rants on your archived programs, jack off, and post-orgasm, feel terrible and like she'd hate you if she knew.

 

“ _She passed away,”_ Bec says to you, in the present.

 

"Oh. Shit. Wow." You're sitting at your desk now, in stunned silence for a moment, until you snap back in to the blinking lights on the switchboard, remember that the pace is supposed to be faster now, _focus_. "I'm sorry to hear that, Bec, she was – definitely a lovable personality many a night 'round these parts. I remember her fondly. Can I ask how she–" that was it, fifteen years was all the short time Jade got to live– "how it happened?"

 

_"Drunk driving accident, December last year. I'm so sorry that it took me so long to find you, mate, and let you know. We're just now going through what things she left in her bedroom, her computer. But I thought–well, she was a big secret fan of yours, that drawing website always made her happy. Poppop and I could always hear her up laughing up a shouting match with you. I know this is facetious, but I wanted to thank you, for posting online, reaching out to people."_

 

Gratefully the station’s prerecorded commercial break at the halfway point was coming up soon enough that you could cut to it early.

 

While Sollux and Equius fix what brought the site down during the last five minutes of that segment, you and Nepeta sit and speak, somberly.

 

“I know it’s been a long time since we’ve heard from her, but I feel terrible she’s gone so soon!” says Nepeta.

 

“Yeah, me too.”

 

“ _Fuck, that last call_ _about that dead girl_ _kinda has me all in my feelings. I regret ever ignoring her calls, I regret letting her slip away, and just. I don’t know. To anyone out there who’s still waiting for that perfect time or even that perfect someone, don’t wait. People have flaws, they’ll never be perfect. Do it, even if it fails, even if it makes you feel that crazy, panicked adrenaline rush. Life is short. Feel all you can before its gone.”_

 

Post-show, its apparent to your sore, sickly body that you've been pleasant and agreeable long enough; head is killing and you can’t wait to be in the dark with pillows smothering it, all alone. The rest of the program had a smooth consistent flow, yielded another record high listenership of 9,000 ear pairs, your beloved website earning 20k hits. This week has really set you off! But you want to die because of your fucking hangover.

 

As Nepeta shows you her favorite clusters of the shipping wall, you feel selfish for the sinking feeling in your chest, the hurt. You keep say-thinking her name over and over, _Jade, Jade._ You feel selfish even wanting to be upset about this. How would this too-heavy sadness make you look to them? Nepeta, Sollux and Equius know more about death, are better acquainted with its kiss, than you are for damn sure. Sollux had lost both grandparents and his father by the time he was 10, and Nepeta and Equius' families are living on an Indian reservation, rooted in too-soon departures, full of generational alcoholism, relatives lost to the depression of a genocide.

 

You had a minor (okay, fucking major, while it lasted) crush on someone who you had zero chances in hell of ever meeting, who might've been 400 pounds – as if that would've stopped you, she was a gem and you wouldn't've cared what she looked like – and who was dead now. So what? You shouldn’t let it hurt you more than it deserves to. And does it?

 

The comments section on your website right now is pretty full of support for you guys. It seems that where Dave's attacks last night were meant to deter you, they've opened doors.

 

Really, at the heart, the Quadrant is a place where people can call in the middle of the night when they can’t sleep. KK may not give the best advice, but he’ll listen and really engage with your romance story. It’s basically a hot line for the unrequited forlorn, the sometimes depressed, suicidal teenagers. And you know what it’s like to know suicide.

 

And you get to take the day off tomorrow, to regroup. Your friends deserve it, and “this will give us time to jump start on our new project,” you say to them, as you take your leave.

 

“New project?” says Nepeta to you. “You mean?”

 

“Let’s make that shipping app.”

 

 

 

♋️

 

 

 

Somehow the news about Jade, on top of the frighteningly long day you'd already had in general, knocks you on your ass and you sleep a solid 6 hours, which is more than you’ve put in in months. At around ten you wake to the dull throb of your alcohol-affected brain, the smell of eggs and butter in a frying pan, black coffee boiling. Saturday mornings are the one time a week your entire family is home and so coincidentally, the day you like to hang around the least.

 

Your bedroom door is closed and you’ll keep it that way for now; the egg smell is making you nauseous, drinking that much having put you in a place where there’s so much putrid waste in your stomach that forcing yourself to puke would actually boost recovery? But you can’t make yourself do it, no matter how sick you feel, never can, never will.

 

You check your phone instead. You’re still getting a few random messages and calls a day from numbers you don’t know, steady ever since Terezi’s broadcast. This happens from time to time randomly, it’s the Information Age and phone books and databases are a thing, but the timing of the Quadrant spreading around doesn’t aid matters much. It's not that difficult to just block the numbers, but still, where are they coming from? Why now?

 

It also doesn’t aid your nausea to see that Dave has sent you a friend request on Pesterchum, after spent six years and counting hate-existing on your People You May Know list. Oh god, now you have to process and accept that you were in that world last night, irritated as all fuck by how heavenly he smelled and insanely attracted to his body you were but wildly uncomfortable with your clear temporary insanity, and now he wants to be “cool” with his ex’s(?) ex. Why? What is his angle here?

 

And what is going on with him and Terezi?

 

He’s offline at the moment, and from a distance since you were kids, you have watched turntechGodhead change his icon ironically to visages such as Shrek with a Santa hat (all days of the year), and GIR from Invader Zim.

 

You can’t stop thinking about what else he was going to say on the patio, before Dirk interrupted/saved you. _“Honestly, Terezi’s like still really into you.”_ Seriously? Hearing him say that was insulting to your intelligence. It’s like he’s always purposefully trying to ignore how much she likes him, always has liked him. Is he fighting just to fight her? If Terezi’s still into you, where are her messages explicitly saying so? Where are her actions?

 

Speaking of messages, and action, it appears turntechGodhead has just flashed online, has just sent you a series.

 

turntechGodhead started pestering carcinoGenetcist at 11:29:55

 

TG: listen not to be weird but i woke up in the middle of my sleep last eve in a big mood to be yelled at by a moody sophomore so  
TG: i listened to your broadcast  
TG: sorry about your friend man i lost somebody not that long ago

 

You can’t believe he’s doing this?

 

TG: anyways i gotta fly but  
TG attached file davids_mother_fucking_baptism.jpeg  
TG: its on the dl nothing like last nights mood  
TG: meenah wants you to swim by she wanted me to tell you specifically like that so  
TG: yeah come by if you feel like it  
TG: peace

 

turntechGodhead ceased pestering at carcinoGeneticist at 11:32:05

 

Re: the events of last night’s poignant show, you’re in a complacent enough mood to respond. That, and your throbbing head can’t work fast enough to come up with a response that would wreck him.

 

carcinoGeneticist began pestering turntechGodhead at 11:40:16

 

CG: I REALLY WISH YOU’D STOP LISTENING TO MY SHOW, LIKE THAT IS A THING THAT NEVER SHOULD’VE STARTED AND COULD I TRAVEL IN TIME BACKWARD, I WOULD STOP IT, AS WELL AS QUITE POSSIBLY YOUR BIRTH ONTO THIS WRETCHED, SUFFERING PLANET  
CG: BUT THANKS 

 _TG is offline, auto-reply:_ meet in the trap its going down meet me in the mall its going down meet me in the club its going down anywhere you meet me guaranteed to go down

CG: THAT SONG IS TERRIBLE  
CG: SEE YOU IF I FEEL LIKE IT  
CG: I WON’T  
CG: PROBABLY

 

carcinoGeneticist ceased pestering turntechGodhead at 11:42:47.

 

At around noon you decide to at least try to keep a pint of black coffee down and stumble downstairs. At the kitchen table, light flooding in from the sliding glass door making things entirely too bright, Kankri is sitting alone, eating an omelet. That explains the horrible burning smell.

 

Your sit down beside across from him with your stained mug and your parents are nearby enough that they could over hear your conversation, should you have one – his mother in the laundry room, your father reclining in the adjacent living room – but probably wouldn’t ever. Kankri is in as bad and as disconnected of a place with your shared father, too. Kankri’s grades have apparently been slipping since he and his mother transitioned here, and his dad is especially hard on him about it in his way. He pays you two based on their report cards each semester. $40 for each A, $30 for Bs, and so on. Straight A’s in seven classes year round meant $560 to fuck with. Most of your 'fucking with' is paying for gas, though, and Kankri is straight up broke lately. His applications to college might be dismal, unyielding, and your father wants him out and independent when he graduates.

 

It’s creepy to see another version of you that has existed in another context. Even doing something as menial as chewing his food like he is now, you can see your own face, your own jawline as if in a mirror, making the same motions. If he wasn’t canonically older you could easily be twins, the way his face favors yours. But he sees you and sees a mistake for existing, the quite unintended bastard child, the reason your father left them.

 

The TV on the kitchen counter is old school, bulky, dials on its front to change the channels, frizzy antennae. Just like your obsession with traditional radio, your dad has an affinity for vintage electronics. On TV across from you and your brother, the current President of the United States is talking, or rather attempting, and your brother decides to give his troubled commentary.

 

“Now keep in mind that I try not to be a conservatively morally as well as fiscally, but it's not that people don’t deserve to _live_ ,” he's saying, about healthcare reform, and _It's easy to be conservative with money when you have none!_ your mind supplies, “it’s that people don’t want to work hard to gain any benefits. Trust me, there is a job created for every person out there if they just put their mind to it to seek it. I have a learning disability, you don’t see me asking for a hand out.”

 

“I don’t even want to begin to unpack all the fuck shit you just said, but I mean seriously, on all the issues that _you_ care about, like teaching the Bible in schools and correcting the language around ableism, there is no arguing. But if you don’t agree, then it’s wrong, right?”

 

Kankri gets a text that makes him frown, tune you out.

 

“Uh...”

 

He gets up immediately and answers the phone, letting himself out through the sliding glass door into the backyard. It’s almost 100 degrees and he’s out there in two-piece flannel pj’s, the monster, talking and holding his hand erratically to and from his jawline. His mouth repeating _sorry, yes, sorry, yes._

 

This won’t be the last of your eye on him, you swear, but your stomach lurches as you digest what little of the coffee you’ve attempted, so you give up hope, dump the rest down the sink drain. As you rinse up, you and your father make brief eye contact across the island that separates the kitchen and the family room, and that serves as your once-over greeting. He has been like this, unnervingly quiet, disinterested in the details of your life, for as long as you can remember, since your mother left. Just like you try not to imagine Kankri’s mother and him as a divorcée and child years ago, you try not to imagine your mother and you from back then. She was never a citizen, was she able to get her own visa? Did she have to go back to the Philippines? Does she think of you at all? Did she ever die?

 

Your father’s answers are always simple, closed.

 

“I don’t know. I haven’t heard from your mother in years. She doesn’t want to be found. I hope everything worked for her.”

 

You’ve already learned your lesson trying to search for her online. You even had Sollux and Equius hack into peoplefinding sites like LixusNixus to try and find a plausible address or number for a woman with her first and last name. Even if you’d found anything accurate, it’s not like you would’ve had the courage to reach out. _Hi, this is your son, just calling to see if there’s a chance that you didn’t abandon me?_ The reverse image searches you’ve tried, of the blurry few you have of her, have all revealed stock photos.

 

It’s on this note in your mind that you dismiss yourself from the kitchen table. Your father never stirs from his armchair once he’s in it, his eyes glazed over. What hasn’t he told you? Why can’t you let go?

 

After “breakfast,” some math homework and several too-strong Indica bowls, you knocked out again until 7 p.m. You know you need to sleep, but it puts you in this haze you don't like. Makes you unaware, unprepared for things.

 

You open PC, cranky and nap-groggy. Still nothing from Terezi. It’s Rose and Kanaya’s date night, and they always send you an in-progress photo. This time it’s of them in a Japanese garden and arboretum. What are you going to do tonight?

 

It’s been so long since you’ve been kissed. Okay not _that_ long, 5 months and 23 days (who’s counting). But that can feel like a long time when you live in a culture impressed by a media that encourages making out, among other things, at every possible avenue. You don’t like to watch porn anymore, it makes you pensive to think about who the strangers might _be_ , what the circumstances were for the video, whether any of it hurts maybe just a little. Do they love each other, and/or their jobs? But that doesn’t mean you, the most hopeful of romantics, don’t still have a wildly creative imagination, influenced by tropes of softcore porn, to get your spark going.

 

It's Saturday night and you're bored and alone, so you slip your hand into your pants, get to thinking. Terezi used to kiss you so well, her black hair framing her face and tickling your inner thighs, but you don’t want to think about her, bundle down further into underneath your blankets in shame. Close your eyes and think about last night, about the party and maybe say Meenah. The way her tongue felt? Would she ever go out with you? You’re disgraced you just had that thought, but maybe she could show you things. She was much taller than you, boisterous, could probably throw you around a little.

 

There was the body shot and there were also your memories of Dave’s hands; lightly bouncing a joint between fingers, pressed along his thighs when he was sitting on that couch. The way his head turned, and he stared when Meenah went down on you. God you should really not call it that.

 

That ass in those jeans, can’t pretend you weren’t looking. It’s not him you’re imagining but maybe someone like him, someone who’d look great in assless chaps, who had wild teenage energy, who could keep you going. There’s some build-up at that thought, but it tries and fails to keep you from coming because it's so pathetic. Just face it, you’re too sad, dehydrated, need to shower. Frustrated, stuck like this since April.

 

Terezi’s pesterchum story is empty, but Dave’s story consists of cross-posted Snapcrap videos from his goggle-POV. Him pushing John in inner-tubes down his pool’s rock slide, pouring wine down a junior girl’s mouth, trashing his head to the beat of Lil Wayne’s “A Milli.” In the background of some vids you can see Meenah and you brothers friends sans Cronus, who seemed to be open towards you; without him there, maybe this wouldn’t be so bad?

 

It’s the siren call of the party, that gets you out of bed and ready to go out, brushing your hair mindlessly. The alternate universe you step into there, in which all social rules and guidelines are subject to change, because drugs and alcohol lift borders, free spirits. You’re not expecting to be the most popular fuck in the hallways next week because of this tiny little kickback or anything, but maybe, just maybe, someone important will take notice of you. It’s not that you need anyone’s approval! It’s just that it sucks to be alone, and you need something different. Who knows, maybe "KK" will show up instead of Karkat in your steed, and make friends? Your heart is desperate for change.

 

When you go to get the keys from beside the garage door, Kankri doesn’t stir in bedroom nearby, where you can see him in the sliver of the open door, hunched over his desk. You can guess he probably declined the invitation. Kanaya and Rose won’t be there with you this time, too, and it’s been a long time since you did anything without them, now that you think about it. Will that change matters? What is it you’re even trying to gain?

 

You’re not sure you want to go as you floor it up the hill to the Estates around 9, it’s more that you feel this magnet drawing you, like your mind is in a haze and you’d be anywhere right now.

 

A [haunting, reverberant pop song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCamNVDnICs) is playing as you walk through the giant, open iron-wrought gates, into the sprawling, white-lit back yard, complete with rushing, babbling rock-slide-pool. About twenty-five to thirty people are here, swimming including Meenah, Porrim, and Aranea, and thank god, as anticipated, not your brother or his fuckfriend.

 

You keep walking as you realize none of the juniors and seniors have particularly noticed or cared that you’ve wandered in, and head straight to the bar table. Champagne on ice, with proper glasses. This _is_ a slightly different party.

 

You’re aware it’s not civilized to swallow the first glass of wine or bubbly down entirely, that you’re supposed to sip, but fuck the civilized. As you pour each glass, exactly four full ones, and imbibe you turn your back on the sophisticated pool-swimmers, as if that would hide the fact that you’re chugging, if they were even watching at all. Okay that’s enough of being embarrassing, you’re on your way to being mind-numbed enough for this and starting not to feel like such a loser for even coming at all, so you start walking around with glass number five for a moment, alone. Two random juniors you have in Advanced Stats fourth period smile and nod at you as they pass. Okay, that’s something.

 

Also, no sign of Terezi, again. She and Dave must really not be good right now.

 

“Hey, mini Vantas!”

 

Meenah calls you over from where she’s one thick leg in and one out of the steaming, rock-quarried jacuzzi that’s connected to the pool, surrounded by Porrim and Aranea.

 

It wasn’t exactly your plan to get into the water, so you stand at the ridge before them. God, they’re all so pretty. Your brother is friendship-unworthy.

 

“Hey,” you offer weakly, waving.

 

“You in?” she says, gesturing to the tub, which has about ten people spaciously playing and laughing within it.

 

“Uh, I don’t think so.”

 

“Don’t be shy,” says Aranea. “The temperature in here is just perfect.”

 

“I wanted to say to you last night at the thing,” says Meenah, “I got mad respect for any kid who can live with Kankri’s spoiled rotten ass and not wanna take their own life or somefin.” She holds out her fist so you lean forward to offer yours and she bumps you rough, the rings on her knuckles scratching and you try not to wince and recoil your hands, man, is she strong.

 

“I appreciate that,” you manage, “I’ve always felt there should be some sort of Greek-god-bearing trophy invented and dedicated in my honor, awarded to me, the unfortunate asshole, year after year.”

 

Porrim laughs loudly, and you try not to feel smug about it.

 

“He’s hard on you, Karkat,” she says, “but deep down, I think he cares.”

 

“I vehemently doubt that.”

 

It is starting to get warm now that you’re inebriated, and standing near a smoking hot cauldron. You make quick work of your t-shirt trying not to stand up and out too much with your stretch-marked stomach, and slink into the water at the halfway point between Meenah and the girls, the next group of people. You realize when sitting as you sit in silence for a moment that shit about Jade is hitting you harder than you expected it to. In this hot tub you swear you can hear her babbling brook of laughter coming from somewhere beside you, around you. You guess this kind of a party isn’t the place to be after this kind of news.

 

But at home, you’d just be alone.

 

Jade’s ghost in your heart notwithstanding, you are enjoying the fact that around these champagne-drunk people, you can get toasted yourself, and no one will noticed because they’re also plastered. For several, beautiful minutes at a time you can just be quiet and warm underwater and bask in that, and no one bothers you. You’re doing it now, for the first time in a long time relishing in being somewhat invisible, hanging out mostly under the bubbles of the giant spa as Aranea, Meenah, and Porrim takes shots to right, and Gamzee, Vriska and Tavros splash each other messily to your left.

 

Having rich ~~friends~~ asshole-Internet-stalkers with million dollar pools is kind of cool. You guess. Just as long as they keep their distance.

 

Dave has been somewhat scarce and in and out of tonight’s festivities, which has made you feel less weird about relaxing and putting your guard down in this palace that by proxy belongs to him. But it’s kind of impossible to avoid his almost gaze, to not watch him when he does make a celebrated appearance through the yard. The host is simultaneously socializing, iThrone DJ-ing and grabbing food, ice, bottles and beer and shit from the million dollar kitchen inside the main house, on the second story. In the giant glass windows that make up the house’s entire back wall, you can see him darting to and from the fridge, then back down the spiral staircase, then directly out here and into the pool for five rowdy minutes, then dovetailing out dripping wet again. He seems in such a good mood to have this many people around.

 

You realize as you peacefully slow-cook that you haven’t been in a pool or the ocean in many years. You haven’t been avoiding or anything, but everything is so arid around; most pools in the valley are privately owned and there’s no reason to use the one in the gym at school. But you have always just known how to swim since you were a kid. Every once a while now you fantasize about driving your dad’s old stick all the way through the Ensena mountains, onto the cliffs and the beach and the sea. You’ve been to the beach before, just before your mother left, you can’t remember much but you are sure of that. It’s something of a recurring dream you have. Your mother swam with you in the ocean, dressed in all white and teaching you how to maintain your breath, not fail or sink, as your father watched from ashore.

 

Here now, you decide to jump the small tile bridge separating the spa from the pool and slink into the gently slopping waves, perfectly cold and crisp and the temperature outside a perfect 80, the chlorine harsh, but the good kind, against your goose-bumped skin. The sounds of the splashing from the giant waterfall cavern, from the rushing slide, drowns out most if not all of the laughter and shouts from your classmates.

 

Time has this way of slipping into nothing when you’re drinking and soon, almost everyone is out of the pool and have shifted inside the parlor room on the east wing of the house, where Dave has transferred the music so now people can dance. It’s past midnight, the magic hour, and you have decided to stay alone in the hot tub. Hiding in plain sight, really. You stare up at the brilliant, gaseous stars you can see so clearly on this hill at the top of the Valley. Close your eyes. Breathe. There are these moments, sometimes, even when you feel like dying. The purely sensory ones, the ones that make you remember why to stay alive.

 

This is crazy, you staying here this long, trying to hold this out. You should just leave, it’s not like that this point anyone would notice if you wandered out, and you will have successfully avoided an _actual_ face-off with–

 

All of a sudden Dave is standing before you, all half-naked and healthy, getting into the hot tub, setting his shades down on the ridge of the jacuzzi. You hate how weak you are, how you have a weakness for beautiful boys in water, and Dave’s hair practically glistens from the light shining underneath the surface.

 

“Hey.”

 

This same light ricochets off his cheekbones as he stares at you, and you were drinking earlier so words want to spill from your mouth, but he says first:

 

“You enjoying yourself? Didn’t think I’d see you tonight or last night. I am sorry about your friend, she sounded like a cool dame.”

 

“How do you know what she s–?”

 

He did say he downloaded the podcast versions of your broadcasts, but did he really actually sit there and _listen_ to them?

 

“It’s fine,” you say quickly, then, flushed. “I didn’t know her that well. It had been almost a year since we’d talked and we didn’t even talk for that long, and it’s not like we were ever going to meet each other. She was virtual, just a phone number.”

 

“I know people are paranoid about robots like replacing our brains with nuts and bolts and making us void of any sentience but, virtual shit can be real shit. It _is_ real shit, like psychologically I think. You think I don’t wonder who the hundred thousand people watching me on my webshow actually _are_? I mean yeah a lot of it could be bots but they could also be Alaskan ice fishers watching me on a Nokia flip phone. Do actually have a guy who does that we talk in the comments, his name’s Jacoby, he’s deep as shit.”

 

You then segue into a not-as-awkward-as-you-anticipated talk about the weirdest “regulars” you’ve ever had, about the annoyances of up-keeping websites and trying to smite program bugs. What is this? What is happening? You are talking somewhat civilly, if not dismissively avoiding the tension boiling in the water between you. As your buzz slow burns off, you decide you need to scale it back, and move back. He keeps drifting back and forth in the water, coming forth a little more each time.

 

“What do you even ‘do’ on your YouTube show?” you ask him.

 

“Nothin’.” He splashes himself gently, absently. “Just turn on the webcam while I’m living my life, basically. The stuff does a lot of the work for me, and it’s all my Bro’s, so I can’t take that much credit. They do like listenin’ to me sing, though.”

 

“See, people like you are the reason I don’t hopelessly abandon my profession. AM talk radio will never fucking die because our craft is serious, we understand more about the physics of sound and our words actually have to have _meaning_ , to carry us through. Unlike Justin Bieber knock-offs, like you.”

 

“Yeah see it’s the exact same thing we’re doing, radio’s the same as a web cam show just O.G., and a hell of a lot more work, I respect that. You and I are alike y’know, Karkat.”

 

“I really don’t think so. And, being an Internet celebrity is stupid because it’s not actual collateral, a three year old with an honorary degree from Harvard could do it and we’re lucky to get pennies for our views and clicks. It doesn’t inherently improve anything in your actual life like, I don’t know, an actual, historically salaried career does? And what’s the point if it’s not making your life better?”

 

“Hm.”

 

“Don’t get me wrong, the station is fun. But.”

 

“You’re unhappy there?”

 

“No, just. Stressed, I guess. II think people are starting to really like us and all, it’s just that I have no plan for this thing. I stand up there and babble on until people stop wanting to listen.”

 

“Maybe that’s your thing. That’s a talent, sort of.”

 

“Yeah, but the mother fucking problem is I can’t speak to any more than three people at once _in public_.” Your face burns hotter. “You were there, that one time.”

 

“Yeah that was pretty bad, dude.”

 

You gave the student speech at your class’s middle school grad, where Dave was somewhere in the stands full of hundreds with Terezi’s family to watch her, and you don’t want to get into it, but you had so much vomit embedded in the threading of your suit jacket afterwards, you had to throw it out.

 

“But the cool thing about ‘the times’ these days is that you don’t have to be a people-person to be famous, and that’s not saying you’re ugly or anything,” says Dave, and is it not? That’s the first time he’s _ever_ refuted a falsity about your looks. “It’s that even for a person with a tragic dislike for human contact, like yourself, there’s hope for you yet.” Then:

 

“Nobody believes me when I say this especially not John who is supposed to _know_ these things but. Despite the whole thing where I talk too much. I’m actually kinda shy, too.”

 

You can’t believe he’s saying all this to you. This is stupid. Dave moves in water like he was born to do it, his limbs causing water to blanket your shoulders, your heart.

 

“What are you doing out here?” you demand of him.

 

He looks taken a back a bit, but enjoying it. “Like, on earth? In general?”

 

“Is it common for the host to abandon the rest of his party?”

 

“Maybe I wanted to see what kind of party you were having. Alone.”

 

You try and combat the flirtiness(?!?!), remember the telling-him-off-for-the-drawings plan.

 

“No, you wanna know why this is not happening? Why we’re not ‘partying together?”

 

“Oh, please tell me.”

 

“Because you’re an asshole, for what you’ve always done with Terezi and for basically publishing my location to god knows how many people on the Internet, not to mention that potbellied caricature.”

 

Dave pauses, nods.

 

“It was a dumb joke,” he says. “Definitely not meant to put you in any danger though. If anybody shows up to your house looking in y’all’s garbage, let me know. Dirk can snipe like a mother fucker. I didn’t just tell you that.” Then, “Took the about you post down a couple hours ago.”

 

Then,

 

"Terezi and I broke up, anyway."

 

Then,

 

“C’mere. Put these on.”

 

From behind he wraps his arms around you somewhat to put on the Spectacles he’s retrieved from the spa’s edge. Your heart is racing because _are they broken up, officially?!?!_ and his skin still smells so devastatingly fucking good, and Dave shows you several of the drawings he makes of himself by pressing the next button on a handle through a slide show of some of his ~~best~~ worst work. They’re absolutely disgusting! Bleeding eyes, gaping, jarring holes in his nose, red blotches on his skin, jagged teeth and exaggerated drawl in text bubbles. Drooling all over everything. Freakishly skinny, like, starving.

 

“I can’t even begin to imagine what you see when you look in the mirror. Christ.”

 

“Trust me you don’t wanna know, babe.”

 

Dave is dangerously close to you, his arms still making like they’re circling around you and you make the mistake of turning in the water to face him. He’s smiling something compelling and coercive as he slips a hand back to get rid of the shades, and you’re not that tipsy anymore, drunk now off the high-splashing bubbles in your face and the seventeen-almost-eighteen year old pretty boy, wet and half naked in lifeguard-red short shorts. He’s your ex’s ex-boyfriend and that makes him Off Fucking Limits but it’s hot in here, and it's been five months and twenty three days, and you're horny and you want this mistake. Want him.

 

“Don’t call me babe,” you say, short.

 

Then: “What?” because he won’t stop staring, inching closer, through the water.

 

“Let me apologize for you.”

 

“Okay. Go ahead, apologize.”

 

“Okay. Let me kiss you, right now.”

 

“What? Fuck you, no! Why on earth would I do that? It makes me sick to even _think_ of sharing your saliva any more than I already have.”

 

“Oh my god.”

 

“What?”

 

“You want me to, don’t you?”

 

“I really, really don’t.”

 

But you do, you're staring at his lips and your voice betrays you all breathless when you say it, so he does it. Closes the space between you puts his hot slick hands on the sides of your face, gently bites your bottom lip. Slips his tongue in your mouth, then out, then thrums it along the abused skin from his bites.

 

“Oh.” Kiss. “I can’t.” Surprisingly passionate, overwhelming kiss. “Why is this happening.”

 

“Just go with it.”

 

He pushes your lighter body through the storming, bubbling water up against the stone wall of the tub, pins your hands against it underwater. Keeps kissing you, then takes a hand and massages your jawline, your neck, and your trembling free hand dares to touch his stringy, ice-blonde hair, lightly fisting it. His mouth on your neck starts to feel way too good, he uses teeth and it hurts, so you yank at the roots.

 

“Mmfm,” he mumbles.

 

“Are you trying to give me a hickey?!”

 

“’Course not.” Speaks low, lips against your throat. “But don’t pull on my hair like that again, darlin’. You don’t wanna know what comes with it.”

 

But you do, god this is sick but you do, and right now in these fanciful moments, he handles like he was born for making out with you. It’s been so long since you’ve been kissed so you close your eyes, pretend he could be anyone. Anyone could come out and see you and that’s when he hoists you up splashing, carries you straddling him face-forward, up the private stairs to his master bedroom’s balcony where no one in the parlor can see you disappearing.

 

In the dark you imagine you see Terezi watching from the hedges, smiling at you two, what has formed in her absence. You know you’re imagining it, know that drugs always make you form delusions, but is this the stuff of dreams, or nightmares? Dave splays you onto his crimson duvet, shows you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT 7/10: So I still am planning on completing this story, I have just had a very busy month, packing and moving my apartment and driving across the country to another state. Once I get my bearings, I will return to my notes and post Chapters 5 and 6! Thanks!


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